4TH MAR 2013/ ISSUE 16 FREE
WWW.MANCUNION.COM
MANCHESTER’S STUDENT NEWSPAPER
Hustings begin
P3
Should we care who Manchester votes for?
P8
Cortbus: I was right to seretly record vile homophobia on campus
P11
Exec officer stranded in Pakistan after passport blunder - Diversity Officer has been gone for 5 weeks - Saad Wahid expected to return to campaign for General Secretary Jonathan Breen News Editor A member of the Students’ Union Executive has been on leave for over five weeks, two weeks more than his allowed holiday time. University of Manchester Students’ Union Diversity Officer Saad Wahid applied for three weeks of leave at the end of January to visit his family in Pakistan, but at the time of going to print had gone over that time by two weeks. Each elected officer is allowed 30 days paid leave a year. Mr Wahid has currently recorded 46 days of holiday time. When contacted on Facebook Mr Wahid said, “I am on leave and in
Pakistan to visit my family as I have been away for a year now. I will be back in early March. “I have gone over by 2 weeks. I am not getting paid for this and I did not anticipate this delay which is due to visa processing.” Mr Wahid, an international student from Pakistan, has not been able to return to the country after handing over his passport to the British High Commission in Pakistan in an effort to obtain a visa for his entire family to live in Britain. General Secretary of the Students’ Union Nick Pringle told The Mancunion, “At the end of the three weeks leave, Saad was unable to return to the country because he wasn’t in possession of his passport because
A Saad-less Students’ Union. Photo: Cil Barnett-Neefs
he had sent it away to obtain a visa for his entire family to return to the UK.” Mr Wahid said he did not anticipate the visa application process taking so long. “It is something I could not avoid,” he said. “I didn’t realise that it would take such a long time for the visa to be processed and now I am stuck. “I never intended to apply for this category of visa from outside of UK ,and not take any additional leave to which I was not entitled to, however on 13th Dec 2012 visa rules were suddenly changed by [the UK Border Agency] restricting International students only to apply for visa from their respective countries rather than from inside the UK.” “It is stated by UKBA that the outcome of the visa should be announced within 15 working days. “My new visa application along with my family member’s application was filed in a few days immediately when I arrived in Karachi i.e. 29th January 2013 and to date I await my passport to return from the British High Commission and therefore am unable to travel in the meantime.” Mr Pringle added, “Given that Saad is not here, therefore he is on leave and he is over his allocation, that leave will be unpaid. “All officers are entitled to 30 days leave and anything over that is unpaid.” As an elected member of the Exec Team, Mr Wahid is also a trustee of the Students’ Union and sits on
Saad Wahid, Diversity Officer the Trustee Board, which oversees the finances, operations, services, and strategy of the Union. They are therefore partly responsible for 80 permanent staff and 250 student
staff.
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