Living Expenses in Pakistan

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Re: Living Expenses in Pakistan

If he already had a car and accommodation then one imagine a fairly good life in 100k but not in this case.

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ahh you miss my point. Am saying above 100k. He mentioned somewhere near 1.5 lac which in my opinion can give a pretty good lifestyle provided he's living on his own. Most visiting faculty are given additional allowances for fuel as well as accomodation. LUMS, GIKI and other private institutes provide accomodation too. In times when the security concerns are really high in Pak, recruiting foreign qualified professionals is getting harder. Naturally due to fierce competition universities are offering a lot more incentives.

For LC I would say that it's best to accept offers from a semi-private or private universities.

Secondly, obviously you need to have some sort of savings to afford buying a car in Pak. But overall once these big expenditures are taken care of, utility bills, food, travel and shopping expenses for one person can be very comfortably dealt with. Accomodation also doesn't have to be a top-notch bungalow or a four bedroom huge house.

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A professor in India earns about 2.5 lacs a month. You should ask for a minimum of 2 lacs a month. Will you be earning extra by consulting etc?

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Since i just came back from pak (last year), infact lahore i think i can give you a more accurate figure. We actually rented a one bedroom, one bath, kitchen living and dinning for 20 K furnished. you can only find furnished places in liveable conditions in cantt and defense and the range can be any where between 17 k to 25 k. You can also find paying guest options in defense. Dont waste your time on the bachelor apartments in model town faisal town etc etc, those are not maintained very well. tons and tons of such places are advertised in sunday newspprz.
As far as food costs are concerned, it will all depend on how much you will eat out or cook and how much you will entertain. For a single person i will say 5 to 10 k ( as you will end up eating out alot). For electricity bills, we used air-conditioning only at night and on weekends as neither me nor my husband were at home. we paid an average of 7k just for electricity. Gas was shared with the landlords we just had to pay 300 to 500 rupees (half the cost). Also we paid 300 for water. So on average you can say 12k for the utilities.
Car rental is like 1k to 4k depending on the model of the car. Since we were staying for 8 months, so we just bought a 2nd hand car and sold it before we came back on the exact same price. Petrol is expensive and as my husband worked at other end of lahore it costed us 500 rupees daily. but i think you will be provided with a daily transport to and from the university.
What surprised me the most was cost of getting my clothes ironed.......seriously its like 20 rupee per piece of clothing (yeah they charge by pieces). but since you will not be wearing starched lawn suits you may very well iron you clothes your self. I was very much used of doing all the house chores myself so we saved up alot on maid/ servant but be prepared to see shocked ppl of faces on knowing that you dont have a servant.

My husband was being paid 90 k and we managed pretty well (though we didn't save anything).

I think these kind of options are a great way to give back to our country, if you are not losing anything, there is no harm.

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Re: Living Expenses in Pakistan

If you go through the hassle of settling in a new environment you should be able to save up a pretty good amount too.1.5 wouldn't be worth it acc to the estimated expenses which others posted.
Nothing below 2 :D

Nobody mentioned the Generator expenses for the time there's loadshedding?

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Re: Living Expenses in Pakistan

Those days are long gone - An assitant professor makes more then 150 k per month thesedays !

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Re: Living Expenses in Pakistan

So LC can make 2+ easily :k:

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Re: Living Expenses in Pakistan

According to his portfolio - I reckon he should be making more then 300K ..

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Re: Living Expenses in Pakistan

Now coming to questions he raised - here is my assumption / estimation ..

For one bed flat ... in a decent area - I say 20 k rent per month , Although there are several good guest houses in Lahore , where he can get one bad room for some where around 1400 to 1800 per day ... Make it a monthly deal , price will definitely goes down.. Plus it saves you all the hassles , like your breakfast would be included , you wont be paying for electricity , Plus a generator ( A must to have yoke ) would be at your disposal , and Security wont be your headache .

As if I were moving to a place , where I would be spending less then a year , I wouldn't bother getting / renting a place , it more hassle .

And as some one else mentioned , it is better to buy a second hand car and then sell it on your way back , rather then burning money in renting cars/ hiring cabs ... it could alone cost you 20 to 30 k depending on your mileage .

A sound running , 1.3 to 1.6 could cost you around one million in PKR.

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don't go anything below 150k. preferably around 200k.

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i am from Lahore, mostly depend on what u prefer & your living style

Monthly Furnished studio apartment rental / (paying guest arrangement?) : Min 25000 to 35000 (but i think its better to get furnished bed room + kitchen )

Monthly Utilities: again depend on the use --> Bills Min 7000 to Max 18000 to 20000

Food: if you will dine mix like some time from hotel & some time from self cooking (like breakfast can be made easily in home) Min 8000 to Max 15000

Transportation (Car rental (daily/weekly/monthly): car rental is a bit expensive almost 1200 to 2000 per day it can be lessen if done on monthly bases but just try to get a 2nd hand car, it will save you almost 15000 a month, at the end u can sell it easily.

try to get apartment near your job area, like if u r getting job in Lums, Lahore then stay in Defence Lahore (DHA)

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i asked few people about the current pay scale for universities professor, regardless of you work for private or government you will earn over 100k to 150k. as far foreign visiting professors concern two are getting 250k & 325k per month respectively in National Textile University, Faisalabad. University also provided them with living space, free pick n drop & daily allowance of 750 RS apart from base pay. also they receive one time starting bonus of base pay of one and half month.

LC i hope this information will help you in negotiate a better package.

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Re: Living Expenses in Pakistan

Honestly, this is what I had expected to hear - the payscale needs to be competitive to attract foreign academics, otherwise very few would be interested in taking up the offer. 100-150K rps is less than $2,000 US/CDN which is paltry for any academic to be making in a Western university. I know that Pakistani unis are hard-pressed to offer the same compensation - that may be unrealistic, but it can't be so low that no one could consider it even if they wanted to.

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Re: Living Expenses in Pakistan

Thanks for the input guys… as far as the stipend is concerned, remember that it’s a stipend and not a salary.
Visiting professors usually only get about 60% of their full-time counterparts at the host institutions

Why?

i) since the professor is probably going to be getting their regular salary from the home institution
ii) the host institution doesn’t budget for visiting professorships as part of their regular salary pool meant for longer-term staff appointments (there’s usually a restricted small budget for visiting faculty positions / often competing with adjunct positions)
iii) the host institution usually either “creates” new courses/seminars for the duration of the visit or gets the visiting professor to fill a contingent need and for this they have to sometimes pull from other funds

So overall, it’s well understood that visiting professors aren’t going to be really making money through their stint, but just meeting their needs while they’re at the host institution. I just want to make sure that the offers I get aren’t too low for me to be comfortable during my stay.

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Re: Living Expenses in Pakistan

LC - what you said makes sense in terms of compensation/stipend.

But I still think that housing and transportation should be included since your stay is for a short duration. It's for the sake of convenience, so that you're not hassled making arrangements in what it is in essense an unfamiliar milieu. If you were a non-Pakistani academic, I would imagine the uni would make all of these arrangements for you because of language and cultural barriers.

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This is great information firenze… thanks for finding out! you’re a resourceful person :k:

It sounds to me like these visiting professors may be on a sabbatical from their home institutions so they’re not getting their full-salaries from there, and since the sabbatical allows them to spend more time at the host institution, they’re offered a good salary in light of their longer-term commitment to their Professoriate.

Nonetheless, this is very useful information for when I’m going to be in a similar situation a few years down the road.

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I was shocked to hear the college/universities professors pay scale, this is really commendable of Govt. of Pakistan & HEC. :k:

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Sehrysh,

I've heard of two different models for this... one where transport/accommodation is provided and the stipend is lower... or the other where everything is rolled into one larger stipend.

I actually prefer the latter because the purpose of my planned visit to Pakistan is two-fold:

i) to avail visiting faculty opportunities (teach, participate in research, engage in technology transfer)

ii) to partake activities in the volunteer sector where I can help in capacity building and community development initiatives

So I'm not even going to be a full-time visiting professor per say, and outside the scheduled hours of teaching, I need the flexibility to carry out other activities... that's why I don't necessarily want to be bound by contractual terms for housing or transportation and would rather handle these things on my own.