July 5, 2003	Saturday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 4,1424

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ISLAMABAD, July 4: The Centre will provide Rs421 million to the NWFP government during the current financial year for promotion of higher education.

According to a statement, this announcement was made in a meeting that was jointly presided over by the NWFP governor, Lt- Gen Iftikhar Hussain Shah (retired), and Higher Education Commission chairman Prof (Dr) Attaur Rehman here on Friday.

The statement said the amount would be distributed among various universities in the province on the basis of their needs.

The federal government has almost doubled the allocations for the province as compared to the previous year, it added.

The statement said the universities would also get their due shares in other academic uplift programmes being initiated by the HEC, including provision of 1,000 PhD scholarships, faculty development, and enhancement of infrastructure.

The NWFP governor, who is also the chancellor of all the universities in the province, supported the ideas and programmes of the HEC for the future development and extension of the universities.

“We are trying our best to bring social change in the far- flung areas of the province, therefore, we need extraordinary support of the federal government and the HEC to materialize our plans in the shortest possible time,” he added.

On the occasion, the HEC chairman highlighted the importance of higher education and said the government had decided to bring a 100 per cent increase in the funding for universities over a period of two years.

In line with this policy, an increase of 30 per cent is expected during the current financial year, raising the total amount for the education sector to about Rs6 billion, he added.

The chairman said out of 7,000 faculty members of the public- sector universities, only 1,550 are PhDs.