Speaker again denotifies meeting of National Assembly body on education

The Speaker has for the second time de-notified a meeting called by the Chairman of the National Assembly Standing Committee on Education, Abid Sher Ali of PML (N). While talking to Business Recorder by telephone from Faisalabad on Friday, Abid Sher Ali said that the de-notification was a measure of the government's apprehension that the Committee may succeed in stalling the process of disbanding the Higher Education Commission (HEC).
"I had moved a summary to convene the Committee meeting on April 12, but the National Assembly Secretariat, at the behest of the Speaker, has denotified it," he stated. Pakistan Muslim League (N) had written a dissenting note on the devolution of HEC to provinces, Abid Sher Ali said adding that his party would resist the move tooth and nail.
The PML (N) had in Annex D-IX noted that "national and uniform curriculum and syllabus are pre-requisites for building a united nation. Curriculum and syllabus should therefore, be the joint responsibility of the federal and provincial governments in order to promote national integration and solidarity.
"Consequent upon omission of the Concurrent Legislative List, PML-N is of the view that item no 38 should be placed on the Federal Legislative list para II so as to bring these matters within the purview of Council of Common Interests. "Since this has not been agreed by the Parliamentary Committee for Constitutional Reforms (PCCR), PML-N wishes to place its views on record, through this Note of Reiteration".
The issue of the HEC was therefore not raised in this dissenting note because HEC was established through an ordinance in 2002 and is not mentioned in the Constitution or in the Concurrent List. Devolution of HEC will compromise national harmony and the federation, Abid Sher Ali said. "We have time and again urged the government not to handover education to provinces as it will harm national harmony with different curriculum in different provinces", the fire-brand PML-N lawmaker said. He maintained that national curriculum builds harmony with students from Quetta studying in Lahore and Karachi and students from Lahore studying in Peshawar or Sindh.
"I do not know what the present regime wants to build after demolishing the bonds of harmony", he said. Abid Sher Ali further said that HEC had brought stability to the educational system of Pakistan and its promotion of research had started yielding results. He added that HEC was responsible for quality education in the country, and its devolution to the provinces would devalue the degrees issued by the universities of Pakistan.
HEC was negotiating funding from World Bank and USAID for the past two years and identifying which departments were to be funded, Abid Sher Ali said adding that billions of rupees from donors for HEC would be suspended if HEC was dissolved. He accused the government of avenging on HEC merely because it challenged fake degrees of parliamentarians. "Due to its autonomous nature it was not possible for the government to pressurise the HEC to approve fake degrees," he said.