Punjab University employees flout deadline for submitting degrees

PU employees flout deadline for submitting degrees
Lahore: After fake degree scandals of the parliamentarians, both public and private sectors have become conscious towards verification of academic documents of their staff. Like other institutions, University of the Punjab, itself being the premier institution holding largest number of examinations in various degrees programmes, is also planning to find out the staff who may have fake degrees. Most of the staff members of grade 16 and 17 of the Punjab University, qualified from universities other than the Punjab University, had not submitted their academic documents to the university. Talking to this correspondent on Thursday, Assistant Registrar University of the Punjab Mohammad Ameen Khan said the university was finalising the lists of the employees whose documents were incomplete. He said a large number of the employees had completed their degrees during their employment period and were promoted on the basis of these degrees but they had not submitted the required documents to the office. He said the university had announced the deadline of July 15 for the submission of documents but majority of the employees had not fulfilled the deadline. The assistant registrar said the employees of grade 16 and above were using delaying tactics by lame excuses of trouble in searching the documents. The university wanted to verify their degrees through Higher Education Commission, as it would send their degrees to their universities. It is reported that in the process of selection board, candidates possessing degrees from the private chartered universities superseded the Punjab University degree-holders in academics marking as the private chartered universities grant higher GPAs to their students to remain in the competitive market. Most of the private chartered universities have also been allegedly found involved in the process of fake-degree awarding. The transcripts of the certificates and degrees are also fake. The Punjab University has to communicate to the respective universities for verification of degrees of the employees working in the university. Some of the universities are not recognised by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) while others have been de-linked with the HEC. But there is no mechanism in the Punjab University for checking the credentials as fake at the time of test and interview. The nation