Female lecturers’ ‘casting couch’ ordeal to get hired in Peshawar colleges

KARACHI - Not limited to the fashion or the film industry anymore, the ‘casting couch’ phenomenon is now rampant in the education institutes too.

Applicants for the post of female lecturers in various colleges in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have complained of messages and phone calls from the officials dealing with collection of their application forms, asking them to make friendship with them to get favour in the recruitment process.

Around 28,000 male and female candidates applied for the positions that were supposed to be filled out on contractual basis. They were also asked to fix their photographs on the application forms, apart from other personal details.

A spouse of one of the candidates, who had given his number instead of his wife’s, said that when he traced the numbers, he found them belonging to clerks in the Directorate of Higher Education.

“They were clerks in the Directorate of Higher Education. As I was out of the city, I sent my brother after them, who settled the matter some way,” The News quoted him as saying.

In another instance, when one female applicant got back to a clerk saying that she was married, the clerk allegedly asked her to seek a divorce and marry him. Enraged family members are threatening to sue the director for the colleges if stern action is not taken immediately.

Deputy Director Colleges Sardar Hussain said that one of the callers at the Government College, Peshawar, was an intern and hence no disciplinary action could be taken against him. Prof Mohammad Tariq, who is responsible for the data entry, scrutiny and compilation of merit list, claimed that no such message had been sent to any candidate.

“These are mere allegations,” he said, claiming that the process was going on in a transparent manner.

Director for Colleges Prof Dr Mukarram Khan was not available for his comments. (ANI)