Four new digital channels for education to be launched this year’
KARACHI- The Federal Minister for Science and Technology, Prof Dr Atta-ur-Rehman, has said that human resource is more vital than the natural resources for the progress of any country.
Speaking at the graduation ceremony of The City-Asia Pacific Institute of Information Technology (APIIT), he emphasised that in order to develop human resource, education should be provided to the youth and their creative talent should be fostered.
He said education should be provided even-handedly to the young generation and they should be facilitated after higher education to serve the country instead of serving western countries.
Addressing the students of the APIIT, mainly from the courses of information technology (IT) and computer sciences, he said IT sector of the country bore plenty of opportunities and potential for absorbing graduates. He urged the graduates not to become part of the ongoing heavy brain drain drive. He said instead of earning money, serving the nation should be given priority.
Reckoning the achievement of his ministry in IT sector, Dr Atta-ur-Rehman informed that 839 cities and towns had been provided Internet facilities, whereas when he became the minister only 29 cities had the facility. Comparing to this, he said, at present only 220 cities of India were connected with the Internet.
He said more than 25,000 schoolteachers across the country would be provided basic IT and computer training towards the end of this year. An amount of Rs600 billion was being invested every year in the field of IT on global basis, he added.
To a question, he said that keeping in view the higher costs of IT education in private-sector institutions, the government had fixed less fee of Rs1,500 per month in all the public sector IT universities which were being established in various metropolises while the monthly fee for Virtual University was fixed as Rs1045, he added.
He said all the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the country were offered 150 per cent extra bandwidth free of cost which would directly benefit the Internet users as it would increase the speed of surfing drastically. “Surfing jobs, which erstwhile took hours of customers, would now be completed in a few minutes only,” he added.
He said the government had started disbursing research productivity allowances to the scientists and researchers, which in many cases stood much higher than their total annual salary. The government had brought out this scheme to ensure that students in the country after passing their A-levels and Intermediate exams would not only opt for medical and engineering sciences courses, but they would also go for physical and natural sciences, he said.
Moreover, the ministry had given another incentive by raising the PhD allowance for the university teachers in the Science and Technology (S&T) from Rs1,500 to Rs5,000. He claimed that this year there had been an unprecedented 6000 per cent increase in the budget for IT and S&T, which stood at Rs120 million only two years ago but increased to Rs7 billion in this budget.
He said four new digital satellite channels of educational TV would be launched in the country this year with the increase in budget allocation for education. Regarding the recommendations of the Task Force on Higher Education, he said the final report would be presented before the President Musharraf on August 7 or August 8, after which the recommendations would be ready for implementation. So far, the members of steering committee were conducting their consultative sessions with representatives of the universities, he added.
With in six and eight weeks the Higher Education Commission (HEC) will be established to replace the University Grants Commission, he said. As per the announcement of made by President General Musharraf, he would head the HEC and all HEC laws and statutes would be duly passed from the federal cabinet before its establishment, he added.
Meanwhile, Dr Atta-ur-Rehman distributed degrees and diplomas among the successful passing students of the graduation ceremony. Some 54 graduating students in Computing were awarded BSc (Hons) degrees, whereas 68 students received diploma in Computing and IT and a matching number of graduates were awarded higher diplomas in Business IT, Computer Systems and Software Engineering.
Ambreen Ahmed secured first position in BSc (Hons) in Computing whereas Omar Rashid Puri and Mohsin Ali Qureshi, remained second and third respectively in the same course. Earlier, Farzana Feroz, Managing Director of the City Schools, shed light on the salient features of the educational programmes of the APIIT.
Source: The News
Date:7/7/2002
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