ISLAMABAD, Jan 8: The Higher Education Commission (HEC), in its second meeting, has finalized the priority areas for financial outlay of additional recurring grant of Rs500 million for the year 2002-3.

The meeting was presided over by the HEC chairman, Dr Attaur Rehman, here on Wednesday.

The meeting decided to allocated Rs300 million to the public sector universities for their operational expenditure, including strengthening of departmental libraries, chemicals and consumables, specific equipment and teaching aids, Rs100 million for national research programmes of the universities, Rs20 million for University of Health Sciences, Lahore and Rs80 million for miscellaneous needs of higher education sector.

The commission also identified the priority areas, which were faculty development, indigenous scholarship programme, faculty training, young researcher support programme, foreign Ph.D scholarship programmes, post-doctoral fellowships, international conferences/workshops, foreign scientists resettlement and expatriate/foreign academics’ short visit programmes.

The formation of a number of committees was also approved under the chairmanship of Prof Dr Attaur Rehman. The committees include vice-chancellors committee, equivalence and accreditation committee, finance, planning and development committee to advise and assist the commission with their recommendations.

The HEC also has revised the rules for attestation of the degrees/diplomas/certificates of the persons, who want to visit foreign countries for studies or jobs.

Under the new rules, only the degrees issued by chartered Pakistani universities in public and private sectors and certificates related to these degrees like transcripts, provisional certificates and detail marks certificates will be attested. For the attestation of a degree/certificate Rs200 will be charged while for each additional copy Rs100 will be charged.