All Answers: Re: [pakgrid] Withdrawal of tax exemption: Teachers, researchers berate decision

Thursday 27 June 2013

Re: [pakgrid] Withdrawal of tax exemption: Teachers, researchers berate decision

Apparently it seems that the educationists (specially at the higher education level) live in small bubbles of their own, where anything that has something to do with "research" is highly valued over any other consideration. We, as a nation, "have not been left behind' due to "lack of research activities' but for more earthly reasons. It does make sense for advanced countries to do research because they already have reached a certain zenith in their path to progress and development and must come up with clever solutions to tackle problems which have hitherto not been solved by the industry, the state institutions or the academia. Most of the "research problems" being solved by our high-minded university faculty, have nothing to do with the problems we are facing. It's just a race to reach the top of the ladder in the university hieararchy, which basically requires "number of publications in HEC approved (whatever that means) journals". It's a race for personal aggrandizement and not in any way related to the well being of the society we live in.

We, as a nation, would be much better off if we tried technologies already developed customized to our cicumstances, an engineering problem, rather than "boldly going where no man has gone before", what is called research. The power crisis is a financial problem (with Rs. 503 billion circular debt) and not a technology-related problem and does not require any piece of "academic research". The terrorism problem has nothing to do with "research actiivity at out universities". I wonder, how university research at the time helped stop World War II, or was it the killing of 60 million people and dropping of bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (the Manhattan project, basically an engineering problem with "research" components, or more of an "applied research" problem)? The problem of illiteracy has more to with primary/secondary education and not at all related to higehr education. The problem of supplying safe drinking water is more of a financial and engineering problem and not a "research problem".

In short rather than producing PhDs en masse, with dubious value, we should try to focus on the more basic problems that this society is facing, among which higher education is just one.

As for offers of jobs at foreign universities with tax-free income, people who have those opportunities must take the next flight there, rather than give reasons as to "why they love their country so much".

Thanks,

Ahmad

On Mon, Jun 17, 2013 at 9:38 PM, Amir Hayat <amir.hayat@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear Colleagues, AOA

I believe you are aware that the government is planning to remove the 75% income tax exemption from university & research institutes employees.

Dr. Atta-ur-Rehman is the architect of current higher education policies that includes better salary packages and 75% tax exemption for faculty members of universities and research institutes. The main objective was to attract smart people in academia so that both education and research flourishes in Pakistan. The policies did work, today when you enter any good university, you find people who are highly educated, active in research and as good as their counterparts in industry.

While people in academia do NOT enjoy as many perks as their counterparts in government jobs and industry yet they do get a decent salary and 75% tax exemption that tries to compensate for the otherwise wide gap in the related perks & privileges. If the government is planning to withdraw this tax exemption then time is not very far when they will ax the Tenure Track and similar other Systems and take the higher education sector to the bad old days.

The citizens of Pakistan had high hopes from PML(N) that they will adopt education friendly policies and will significantly increase the education budget. On the contrary the are adopting policies that will discourage people from joining education sector and encourage them to leave it and join either industry or universities in middle east and in West.

At a personal level I will urge the prime minister and the finance minister to withdraw this anti 'higher education & research' policy change from the budget. If that does not happen in the next few days then the university teachers association should give a call for peaceful protests all over the country.

Regards,

Dr. Amir Hayat