SWABI, Sept 26: Special adviser to the prime minister on strategic affairs and ex-chairman of Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission, Dr Ishfaq Ahmad, said on Saturday that Pakistan had great potential to produce high-tech manpower.

He said this while speaking at the concluding ceremony of a competition titled 'the Softcom 2004' at the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Topi.

He said the government should give top priority to education and youngsters should use all their energies in the pursuit of knowledge. He said the GIK Institute had played a vital role in giving engineering education a boost, producing students of high calibre.

He expressed the hope that the institute would continue to play a useful role in the future. He paid rich tributes to the institute's founder and former president of Pakistan, Ghulam Ishaq Khan.

"All the credit goes to him for establishing this institution where students have been provided remarkable facilities," he said. He praised the competition's organizers, saying such events would boost education by providing opportunities to students of different universities to test their knowledge.

The institute's rector Dr Muhammad Naseer Khan and dean of computer science faculty, Dr Anwar Majid Mirza, also spoke on the occasion. Earlier, Dr Ishfaq gave away trophies and prizes to the winning teams.

The categories were: multimedia competition; animation competition; web-related competition; interactive CD competition; quiz competition and speed programming competition. The total prize money was Rs160,000.

SCHOLARSHIP: The NWFP government has increased scholarships for the students of GIK Institute. Sources said that NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani, who recently visited the institute, promised that the government will provide scholarships to four students of undergraduate programmes.