A Response to the post: “IIUI Welfare Fund: Bane and Boon”

In response to our post about IIUI Welfare Fund, we have received following comments from one reader.

A Response to the post: “IIUI Welfare Fund: Bane or Boon”

Dear Blogers

As a graduate and junior faculty member of the University, I appreciate your initiative and the candid discussions which you have floated about the IIUI related issues. Supposing that the IIUI Blog is a democratic and open for all forum, I would like to contribute to it as something occurs to my mind. For the time being, I want to comment frankly on one of your recent posts, namely: “IIUI Welfare Fund: Bane and Boon”.

In fact, you can consider me one of those “chosen people” which you have referred to in this post as I have been the member of Welfare Fund committee for a year or so. Now, one may agree with several points raised in the post, for instance why the visiting faculty should be charged with the Welfare Fund deduction if they are not its beneficiary? And that it would be more transparent to make public the annual reports of the fund through webpage or any other media.

However, at occasions the contributor of the post seems to be guided by mere speculations. For instance, at one point the post reads: “it seems that the accounts of welfare fund are kept secret from the auditors, and especially external auditors”. Now, “It seems” clearly indicates that the writer does not have exact information on the issue. I feel that floating a suspicion in this way is not in accordance with the Islamic teachings which the writer also refers to. Without loosing its thrust, the point could have been put something like this: “We are not sure if the matters related to the welfare fund are regularly scrutinized by the auditors, if not, they must be”.

In my humble view, the fund money is utilized honestly. Alhamdulillah, there never has been any concrete allegation of deliberate misuse. The point about the Umra scheme makes sense but you would agree that it is a matter of interpretation and not a case of fraudulent use of money.

At the end, it is not to deny that like every human effort there is a possibility of improvement in the functioning of IIUI Welfare Fund, for which some suggestions given in the post can be helpful.