KARACHI, June 4: The city Nazim, Naimatullah Khan, announced on Tuesday a new admission policy for Karachi colleges under which about 80,000 students clearing matriculation examinations would be admitted to first-year Intermediate. The centralized admission policy has also been revised.

At a press conference at his office, the Nazim announced that 22,000 new seats had been created to accommodate all students passing matric exams irrespective of the grade they obtained. Besides, all quota, including teachers’ and sports quota, had been abolished, so all the admissions would be on merit. He pointed out that last year some 52,000 candidates were given admissions in first-year classes in the colleges in Karachi.

Mr Khan declared that at the time of framing the admission policy due care would be taken that everyone who passed matric examinations got admission to first-year class.

In pursuance of this goal the education department of the city government would establish six new colleges and summary of nine more had been approved, which would be in addition to the existing 91 colleges in Karachi, he said. With the functioning of these, the total number of colleges in the city would become 106.

Mr Khan said about 51 secondary schools were being upgraded to Inter college status, in the evening shift.

He said the federal government had approved the PC-1 of an information technology university for the city government which would be established at the Civic Centre, Korangi. With the implementation of the project, the city government would be the only district government in the country to operate an IT university.

The local body Karachi was already operating a medical and dental college.

He said in six colleges classes of BBA would be introduced and BCS classes would be started in six colleges.

Evening classes would be introduced in all the colleges. Work on the setting up of computer labs in all the colleges had also been initiated.

With a view to promoting IT education, computer fee in colleges had been reduced from Rs1,000 to Rs500, and the price of brochure had been brought down to Rs50 from Rs100, he added.

To ensure that students did not suffer due to the centralized admission policy as they did during the previous session, a new 17-member admission committee had been formed consisting of two elected representatives, the Nazim said. — PPI/APP