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KU's Botany Garden - a new attraction: Campus Round up By Mukhtar Alam While the Pakistan Army's dream of having a botanical garden at the Race Course Ground is yet to come true, the Karachi University has come out with the project of establishing such a garden at an estimated cost of Rs29.28 million to be provided by the Higher Education Commission (HEC). The project, the KU campus, kicks off next month and is scheduled to be completed within two years. The KU's botanical garden plan was taken up at a recent meeting of the Departmental Development Working Party of the HEC in Islamabad. It was approved subsequently. According to the scheme, the KU will bear the recurring expenditures of the garden after its completion. Dean of Science faculty Dr Mohammad Qaiser says the garden, with its project site spread over an area of 30 acres close to the Bhayani entrance of the university, will take six to eight years to groom properly. The Botany department will look after the project. The garden will be part of the teaching that leads to masters' degree, besides being an integral part of the research for M.Phil and PhD programmes. The dean mentions that the proposed garden will be the first of its kind in the country. In addition to having direct relevance to environmental awareness, reduction in pollution, promotion of certain industries, agriculture, forestry, public health and plant introduction, the garden will also provide first-hand information to students about various aspects of plant life and impart practical and technical knowledge and training to them. We are planning to plant more than 5,000 species that are available within the country and abroad, Dr Qaiser says, adding that the garden will be accessible to citizens as well. About survival of certain plants in Karachi, the dean, who is also a noted plant scientist of the country, says that three greenhouses of alpine and sub-alpine flora, temperate flora and tropical flora of the heights ranging from 8 to 25 feet will be established. Being the first botanical garden of the country, the likely shortage of manpower would be addressed by having linkage with other important botanical gardens, including the Royal Botanical Gardens of England and Edinburgh and the Botanical Garden of Berlin, the dean points out. * * * * * The KU's Economics department held a seminar on Expectations from University Graduates - Employers' Vision in collaboration with the Society of Human Resource Management last week. Speakers were of the view that human resource management was a scientific discipline where only those were accepted and absorbed who had the calibre of delivering something concrete and could give the best output. Employers may have a very selfish view of the employees but certainly they have to keep an eye over the genuine targets and organizational goals. One of the speakers said that in the past, organizations typically recruited people on the basis of their technical skills in the field of their specialization. But now, they added, employers hired people keeping in view their abilities or attitudes, to be trained and groomed with the needed skills while at work. The director of human resource department at State Bank of Pakistan, Akram Durrani, Khan Kashif Ijaz of HBL, dean of KU's Arts faculty Dr M. Shamsuddin, Saba Masood of the Society of Human Resource Management, and Zahid Khawaja, a trainer in the field of human resource management, spoke at the seminar. * * * * * Referring to the last Campus Round-up (Oct 5, 2004), the deputy chairman of the Urdu University Senate, Jamiluddin Aali, has clarified that appointing a chief-administrator, after the exit of Dr Pirzada Qasim, the first vice-chancellor, was in line with the prescribed rules. He says that Aftab Ahmad Khan, a member of the university's senate, was appointed as chief-administrator of the university under section 12 of the University Ordinance-2002, which says: "At any time when the office of the vice-chancellor is vacant or the vice-chancellor is absent or is unable to perform the functions of his office due to illness or some other cause, the senate shall make such arrangements for the performance of the duties of the vice-chancellor as it may deem fit." Please Visit our Sponsor (Ads open in separate window)
