In order to provide equal access to underprivileged/minority groups as well as to enhance the proportion of any under-represented class or area in the society, many countries in the world have devised effective laws and policies that promote equal opportunities and give special preferences to these groups in terms of distribution of resources and services.
These laws are termed as affirmative actions or positive discrimination and are continuously being reviewed in terms of their implementation and effectiveness. Under these laws all the public bodies are responsible to eliminate discrimination and promote equality and publish the details of such initiatives in their annual reports.
These laws also specify that it is not the responsibility of those who claim unfair treatment to provide evidence but it is the responsibility of the alleged discriminator to prove his/her legitimacy. Those who ignore the implementation of the affirmative action laws are heavily penalized and the penalty could include imprisonment as well.
In this regard article 27 of the Constitution of Pakistan prescribes mechanism to safeguard against discrimination. This article authorizes the parliament to make effective legislation in order to redress the under-representation of any class or area in the service of Pakistan.
Under this provision the parliament of Pakistan devised provincial quota system for federal services as well as for admission in federal institutes/universities so as to provide equal opportunity/representation to all the provinces. According to this quota system, the share of Punjab (including federal capital Islamabad) in federal services and admissions in educational institutes is 50%, Sindh 19% (11.4% rural and 7.6% Urban), KPK 11.5 %, Baluchistan 6%, GB & FATA 4%, AJK 2% and the remaining 7.5% for the open merit.
Now let us see if the above affirmative action is implemented by federal public bodies in its true letter and spirit. In this regard a news item appeared in some sections of the press recently (July 2, 2014) which concludes that the ‘Senate committee on job quota failed to do its job’. This committee was formed around four years ago (Sep 2010) when some Senators from the smaller provinces complained against non-implementation of the provincial job quota in federal services.
The committee was headed by the then leader of the house Nayyar Bokhari and was tasked to review the appointment between 2007 and 2010. The committee conducted around 32 meetings but could not produce the final report and now it has been dissolved as the subject matter has been transferred to Senate Standing Committee on Law and Justice. So that’s the state-of-the-art of the government initiatives regarding implementation of the affirmative actions to provide equity based representation and distribution of services and resources to all the provinces.
Now the incumbent Government could appoint another committee to find out the reasons as to why the Senate’s Special Committee on Job Quota failed to do its job in 4 years? And this process could continue endlessly without delivering anything good to the masses.
The under-represented classes and areas are continuously crying for justice. Leaving other federal bodies/institutes aside let us look at the biased and discriminatory attitude of the country’s premier education related body i.e. the Higher Education Commission (HEC). In this regard an important source of reference could be the letter written in July 2012 by the then Governor of Baluchistan Mr Zulfiqar Ali Magsi to the Prime Minister of Pakistan which says that ‘provincial quota in Higher Education Commission (HEC) becomes 6 percent while only 0.9 percent employments have been given to the province’.
Similarly, Sindh Chapter of the Federation of All Pakistan Academic Staff Association (FAPUASA) urged the Prime Minister and the President of Pakistan to make the Higher Education Commission accountable for continued discrimination against Sindh in terms of distribution of services and resources (Press Release Jan 1, 2014).
In response to this complaint the then Executive Director who is now the incumbent Chairperson of HEC visited the HEC Regional Centre Karachi and assured FAPUASA Sindh Chapter that an independent inquiry would be held to review HECs services and resource distribution since 2002 and in the light of the findings of this inquiry a transparent mechanism would be devised for better implementation of the affirmative action.
Unfortunately, even after six months there had been no any progress towards this aim and the biased and discriminatory policies are going on continuously. As a proof of biased attitude one could cite HEC’s own data. According to HEC’s annual report 2010-11 the percentage of province-wise distribution of scholarships is: Punjab 66.5; KPK 21.7; Sindh 5.7; Federal 3.5; AJK 1.9; Baluchistan 0.6 and FATA 0.5.These figures are clearly against the constitutionally approved rights of the smaller provinces specially in the case of Sindh and Baluchistan!
Similar trend of distribution could easily be found for research and development grants, travel grants, number of tenure track faculty members, number of national and international seminars and conferences grants, number of Business Incubator Centres, number and location of federal Universities/institutes such at COMSATS, number of HEC funded research journals, number of Campus Management Software Solutions, number of sports events and many other projects.
It is not only Sindh and Baluchistan but recently Vice-Chancellors of 18 public sector Universities of KPK also issued a joint statement regarding continued biased attitude of HEC in terms of job/admission quota and distribution of resources (reported in press on July 3, 2014). The Vice-Chancellors have complained that not only HEC but except the QAU, all other 13 public sector federal Universities neither implement job nor admission quota despite the facts that the major portion of funding goes to federal Universities due to biased attitude of HEC.
It is pertinent to note that the non-implementation of the affirmative action is the violation of the Constitution of Pakistan and may lead Pakistan’s already fragile federation towards a serious national crisis! It is the time that the government pays heed to this very important issue and learning from other countries moves toward more positive discrimination to compensate the loss of the under-represented classes and areas.
To this aim a joint committee consisting of Senators from smaller provinces and representatives of the University teachers may immediately be constituted to conduct a thorough review of HEC and prepare 5 year strategic plan for the future.
source: http://viewpointonline.net/2014/07/vp212/time-to-end-hec-s-discriminatory-attitude-towards-sindh-baiochistan
