SMIU's 2nd Global Congress Concludes

The 2nd Global and Research Congress-2024 organized by Sindh Madressat-ul-Islam University, was concluded with several conferences and sessions held on Thursday

KARACHI, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 29th Feb, 2024) The 2nd Global and Research Congress-2024 organized by Sindh Madressat-ul-Islam University, was concluded with several conferences and sessions held on Thursday.

On the second and concluding day of the GRC-24, panel discussion on the topic of "Population Challenges and Social Inclusion: Role of Media in Shaping Peaceful and Smart Communities” held.

The speakers stressed that society must control population as there were limited resources in our country to fulfil needs of the growing population. The academicians and media persons discussed the issue while taking part in the session.

Dr. Tauseef Ahmed Khan, former chairman of Department of Mass Communication at Federal urdu University and a noted columnist said that media has played a pivotal role in the change of society and educating the people and added media can play a major role in spreading awareness among masses about family planning.

He said our neighboring counties like Iran, Bangladesh and India were trying to control their population, hence we too must take steps to control the population.

He said during the era of Ayub Khan, Radio Pakistan and Pakistan Television had telecast programs on family planning, after that situation changed in this respect.

He said the government shall have made the family planning as its priority then media couldn’t ignore it. He further said the traditional and social media can play a major role in making aware the people and the society could be developed after educating the people about population which is a core problem of our society.

Prominent intellectual Dr Riaz Ahmed Shaikh said we should openly talk on the population issues and family planning that will make the society sustainable, otherwise we couldn’t control the problems that can be emerged from the unchecked population growth. He said the direction of population control is lacking here in our society, that is why we are facing multidimensional problems.

Senior journalist Shahzeb Jillani said, "We have not seriously took the family planning as a main social problem. Male members of our society have a final decision that how much they need children, while women have no such right to take decision about family planning."

He said shyness is also prevailing in elite class of cities about family planning matters, then how can we blame on people of rural areas. “Even female doctors possess shyness in guiding people about family planning,” Shahzeb Jillani said and added that women of the country must be empowered by giving them a right to take their own decisions. He was of the view that there are many hang ups of the society that must be crossed.

Noted intellectual Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ismail Kumbhar said that our livelihood resources like agriculture and fisheries have not increased on the contrary population was growing very fast.

He said there was nothing any authentic data about population and informal Labour like peasants, house servants and other daily wages workers etc.

He said 80 percent ground water of our land is not drinkable, that is why people have health problems also. He was of the opinion that pollution and environmental issues are major problems of our country and the rest problems are their byproduct.

Another panel discussion was also held on on the topic of "Artificial Intelligence, Future research trends, ethical concepts and job market issues.

Famous IT and artificial intelligence experts in Pakistan, Dr. Mehtab Alam, Professor at University of Karachi, Dr. Muhammad Hassan, Professor at JPMC, Dr. Imtiaz Hussain, Dr. Danish Jameel and Dr. Nauman Ali Khan expressed their views.

Experts said that AI technology was basically a form of face reading that comes with a lot of intuition. They remarked that the knowledge was found in our ancestors. Everything in the world has opened up after artificial intelligence, hence no one has hidden from the world. Any action we take is being recorded, transmitted to the clouds where someone uses it.

According to experts, data collectors are going to get the most jobs in the world now. So there is a great need to come towards this sector. They emphasized the need for more research in the field of medicine and saying that a medicine is made after ten years of experiences, but compared to that, bacteria keep coming, like corona virus and others, that is why antibiotic medicines are losing impact.

In the Global Congress a technical session was also held on the topic of “Teachers' Role for Sustainable Development”.

The speakers said that research is not just a paper work but research plays a role of backbone for sustainable development of the society. They said planning is not possible without it. The session was presided over by Syeda Rakhshanda while Dr. Rabia Aslam chaired the session. The program was moderated by Amara Shams.

Another session was held “Academic librarianship trends in the 21st century,” which was presided over by Dr. Mahboob Ali Dahraj.

The speakers said that no society can ignore the importance of libraries. The power of information helps people to move forward. Nations that are far from libraries cannot achieve the goals of sustainable development, they said.