Future of hundreds of students at stake
By: Asma Ghani
ISLAMABAD – Due to the nasty politicking between the high ups of the Ministry of Information Technology the future of hundreds of students is at stake studying on the Ministry’s scholarships and dozens of research projects are at standstill.
Just because the Board of Directors of the Information and Communication Technologies Research and Development (ICT R&D) Fund could not meet, the funds could not be released to the students studying on scholarships in various local universities and for research projects initiated by the fund.
The Ministry has also failed to appoint a permanent Chief Executive Officer of the ICT R&D Fund, and acting CEO Mushtaq Bhatti has been looking the affairs of the fund.
The Ministry had established National ICT R&D Fund in September 2006 aimed at transforming Pakistan’s economy into a knowledge-based economy. At present, the Fund has been supporting about 1,300 students mostly from rural and underprivileged areas in terms of scholarships’ award for four-year BS programme in IT related disciplines. The Fund had also enabled initiation of about 40 research sponsoring development projects for PhD students.
But due to the non-payment of funds all the projects have come to a halt and all the investment made would go down the drain if the payments were not made. It has been learnt that most of the students belong to very poor families and also support their families with the stipend besides continuing their studies.
Source: The Nation
Date:10/3/2010
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