ISLAMABAD, Sept 22: The Higher Education Commission (HEC) chairman, Prof Dr Attaur Rehman, on Thursday said that the appointment of teachers on contract would not only ensure quality education in the educational institutions but also develop the skills of the teachers.

Speaking at the concluding ceremony of the 9th International Symposium on Advanced Materials organised by the Kahuta Research Laboratories (KRL) here, Dr Rehman said the government had devised all necessary policies for introducing quality education in the country and added that all public sector universities were fully equipped with modern instruments.

He urged the researchers to benefit from the free access literature being provided by the government and continue their writings because they were granted productivity allowances for that.

The contract policy, he said, had introduced quality education and it should be continued in future because it had enabled the teachers to work hard, which directly benefited the students.

Dr Rehman said the education budget had been increased manifold and almost 1,900 foreign journals were available in the libraries of all institutions by introducing educational websites.

“The government should further invest in research and information technology sector in order to cope with the challenges of globalisation,” he added.

Speaking on the occasion, the KRL chairman, Javed Ashraf Mirza, said the advanced materials offered a viable solution for environmental issues like Ozone thinning, green house effect, global warming and clean drinking water. The future discipline would be of the advanced materials because we need its application in our daily life routine.

“Issues like resource conservation, landfill space and recycling are leading the manufacturers to replace the traditional materials with synthetic ones that are recyclable,” he added.

Dr Mirza said in Europe over a hundred million mobiles phones were discarded annually, each phone containing 50 grams of plastic resulting in throwing away 4,500 metric tones of plastic annually. To cope with the threat, he said, material scientists had developed eco-friendly cell phones that were broke down in composition and nourished sun flower.

“Pakistan cannot afford to stay behind, as the progress of industry and infrastructure depends upon the adoption of promotion and invention of new materials and for this purpose we must have to closely work with the foreign scientists.”

However, he said, the KRL was doing much to cope with the problem by organising such kind of symposium that had so far gather about 2,000 researchers, academicians and experts in order to find out a solution of the future challenges.