Despite all the efforts by the regime to weaken the HEC, he added, it is still delivering in the field of higher education and the government should be supporting it by enabling it to improve its functioning. Unfortunately, Imran said, the government has been impeding the HEC's work since it came into power. "Now it has gone for a full assault on the HEC, eyeing its resources for further corruption," the PTI chief alleged.
Imran pointed out that the government had contravened the SC order of April 2011, specifically asking the government not to violate HEC Ordinance 2002 by getting the Establishment Division to appoint a bureaucrat as the Executive Director of the HEC. However, the HEC Ordinance dictates that only the Commission can legally take that decision. The PTI chief lamented that the worst part of the move was that a retired Major, now a Grade 22 bureaucrat, had been given this appointment replacing a qualified technocrat.
The PTI chief, who has campaigned against corruption as part of his election slogan, said the HEC's performance has been devoid of major corruption and scandal which has allowed it to gain financial support from international institutions such as the World Bank - who otherwise have been reluctant to fund projects in Pakistan.
He further said that the government corporations have been pillaged, bankrupted and politicised, and added that now education, which is already at the bottom of this government's priorities, will suffer yet another major setback with this wanton destruction of the HEC.