04 January 2005	Tuesday	22 Ziqa'ad 1425

KARACHI, Jan 3: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on stressed the need for promoting technology-based industrial growth for achieving sustainable economic growth in the years to come.

Speaking at the commemoration ceremony for the donation of the LEJ Campus to the NED University by the late philanthropist, Latif Ebrahim Jamal, the prime minister said there was a greater need for private-public partnership for the promotion of engineering sciences which is the backbone of knowledge and economic growth.

He said that the new disciplines -- Bio-Engineering and Medical Engineering -- being introduced in the LEJ campus by the NED University were at present in great demand in developed countries, and hoped that the demand would increase also within the country.

The prime minister regretted that Pakistan lagged far behind in imparting higher education, and pointed out that today, only 2.9 per cent students had the access to higher education as against 29 per cent in India and around 67 per cent in Korea.

Similarly, quality of education is also not up to the mark and needs a lot of improvement to produce such people who could help achieve technological and knowledge-based economic progress. The government has already enhanced education budget from Rs3 billion to Rs9 billion this year.

Mr Aziz said that engineering sciences in the country had been neglected because engineering universities were among the weakest in the higher education sector having no research orientation and capacity building.

This could be verified by the fact that engineering universities in the country produced a handful of PhDs. He, however, added that this deficiency was now being removed by the efforts of Prof Attaur Rehman, Chairman of the Higher Education Commission.

The government has created special endowment fund to support research activities in every engineering university and a sum of Rs200 million has been provided to the NED University for the purpose.

Stressing the need for promoting engineering sciences, he said that without local capacity in engineering, no nation could achieve progress, and added that great industrial revolution of the 18th century was largely the display of indigenous engineering capabilities of the western nations, helped by access to tremendous natural raw material resources through new-found colonies.

Even today, developed nations lay special emphasis on developing capacities in engineering sciences, and venture shrewdly into new and emerging disciplines. Therefore, the NED University has taken an appropriate decision of trying to introduce new disciplines of engineering at this stage and is also working on the right lines by trying to have properly educated and trained engineers in these disciplines by the year 2010.

The prime minister appreciated the NED University for achieving an excellent record of academic peace, and said that it was one of the very few public sector educational institutions which had got the ISO-9001 certification.

It is an occasion to celebrate the magnificent donation given by one of the great philanthropists of the country, Mr Latif Ebrahim Jamal, to the NED University, but it is also an occasion for expressing our sorrow that he could not survive to see the LEJ campus becoming the centre for teaching of new engineering disciplines.

The prime minister noted that among other contributions by Latif Ebrahim Jamal was the world renowned research establishment, the Husain Ebrahim Jamal Research Institute of Chemistry, at the University of Karachi. Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad, Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim and Prof Attaur Rehman, were also present. Aziz Latif Jamal, Chairman of the HEJ Foundation also spoke.