Senate Committee Recommends Restoration Of Prime Minister Scheme For Financial Help To Students

Senate Standing Committee on Science and Technology in its meeting on Wednesday recommended restoring the Prime Minister scheme for financially supporting the students from poor background and decided to call Higher Education Commission (HEC) in next meeting to discuss details

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd May, 2019 ):Senate Standing Committee on Science and Technology in its meeting on Wednesday recommended restoring the Prime Minister scheme for financially supporting the students from poor background and decided to call Higher Education Commission (HEC) in next meeting to discuss details.

The meeting was held under the chairmanship of Senator Mushtaq Ahmed here at the Parliament House and was attended among others by Senators Nuzhat Sadiq, Gianchand and Syed Sabir Shah.

A list of defaulter students who went on scholarships and did not return to the country was also shared with the committee. The committee recommended devising a strategy to give incentives, research directions and other measures to prevent defaulting students.

The work done by COMSATS in hybrid teaching techniques also came under discussion and the prospects of taking it to school level were discussed. Possibility of new campuses of COMSATS in Sindh, Balochistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was discussed and the Committee decided to ask HEC about availability of funding because HEC had said to have only 280 million under head of development for the year.

The committee constituted a sub-committee to look into the issue of delay in award of dual-degree to some students of COMSATS despite repeated directions of the committee.

The meeting was told by Pakistan Standards and Quality Council that the pending promotion cases will be completed by 30 June.

Regarding pending inquiries the committee members remarked that minor penalties and transfers will not serve the purpose and the committee had recommended suspensions. The secretary assured the committee that a report on the six inquiry cases will be shared within one week in addition to the other two issues.

The Committee nominated Pir Syed Sabir Shah as member of Board of Governor of Pakistan Halal Food Authority.

Professor Dr. Raheel Qamar, Rector COMSATS University gave compliance report on the committee's directions in previous meeting. He told the committee that the university was ranked 10th in the SAARC region and the nine universities above COMSATS were Indian institutes.

He said the university aimed to achieve sixth position but that required strengthening research and development expertise by more funding and projects. The Committee was told that there was some overlap between the jurisdiction of the parent ministry of university and Higher Education Commission.

The committee recommended that the two universities NUST and COMSATS should be purely under the ministry and their development projects should not have the need to be routed through HEC.

Regarding the salary structure of lecturers it was suggested that it should be brought at par with other universities to attract better minds to science and technology universities.