April 27, 2008	Sunday	Rabi-us-Sani 20, 1429

ISLAMABAD, April 26: The Allama Iqbal Open University on Saturday said the accreditation of its BE Telecom programme was being delayed by the Pakistan Engineering Council (PEC) and the university administration was in no way at fault.

AIOU spokesperson Ubaidullah Mumtaz said the university had been actively seeking accreditation of the programme since 2002 by repeatedly submitting formal requests to the PEC, but the accreditation issue had not been resolved.

According to him, the AIOU’s programme follows HEC Scheme of Studies and it has been approved by all the university statutory bodies.

He said six different site visits had been conducted by the PEC technical experts for accreditation, and the council contended that AIOU Act did not allow the university to launch an engineering programme.

The BE Telecom programme was launched in 2000 at Lahore and Rawalpindi. A total of 916 students enrolled in the programme during 2000-05 have graduated, few more batches of students enrolled in 2004 and 2005 are at various stages of completing their programme.

The spokesperson said two federal ministers of education had written to the PEC that the AIOU Act did allow the university to offer the programme, adding that the HEC chairman also wrote to the PEC that the programme was approved by the Higher Education Commission. The university provided detailed information to demonstrate compliance with the PEC criteria on six different occasions since 2003.