LAHORE, April 2: The Punjab governor has constituted three Chancellor's Consultative Committees on Higher Education to consult and give recommendations on sharing of resources among universities in the province , linkages with local industry and society and computerization of universities' database.

All three committees have been directed to prepare a report and give recommendations within two weeks for the development of an action plan that could help achieve the goals.

The committee on sharing of resources among universities in the province, headed by Punjab University's Centre for High Energy Physics director Prof Dr Fazal-i-Aleem, will work on linking up of libraries of all universities, exchange of faculty and collaborations in research activities, including sharing of research journals. The committee will also work out plans that different universities should conduct joint conferences and seminars.

The committee on development of linkages with the local industry and society, headed by PU's Institute of Administrative Sciences director Prof Dr Zafar Iqbal Jadoon, will be required to identify the needs of local industries near respective universities in the province. The committee will also be required to plan promotion of different universities' capacities and motivation of industrialists to play their part in universities.

The universities will be asked to bring local industrialists on their boards of studies so that they could give their vision to update the curricula to churn out manpower that could be utilized in the local industry. Similarly, the committee will also recommend students' internships in local industries so that they could get hands on experience.

The third committee on computerization of universities' database, headed by University of Engineering and Technology's chief consultant on Information technology Prof Dr Shaiq A Haq, will work on the development of all universities' database.

As the university had already developed a software "Computerization of universities", Punjab governor Khalid Maqbool asked all universities' vice-chancellors to develop proto-type softwares in collaboration with the UET and computerize their database.

The governor also said the committee should also work to develop an Inter-University Central Website (IUCW) so that research papers contributed by different universities could be shared by others. He said the IUCW would also help him access respective universities' database for comparison of work done by universities.

The governor also told the meeting that the HEC had established a National Digital Library that would include complete text of over 10,000 research journals. The researchers in respective universities would be able to download the text of certain research subjects free of cost. However, the universities would be required to pay some price to download a complete journal.