LAHORE: Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has announced increasing the annual amount of the Punjab Educational Endowment Fund (PEEF) from Rs2 billion to Rs4 billion and giving educational scholarships to 200,000 deserving talented students the next year.

He also announced giving scholarships for an MSc education to the talented students belonging to FATA under the PEEF.

The announcements were made at a function to celebrate achieving 100,000 educational scholarships on Friday.

Mr Sharif said that not only Punjab but the less-privileged but hardworking and talented students of Sindh, Balochistan, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Azad Kashmir, FATA and Gilgit-Baltistan had also been included in the scholarship programme.

200,000 deserving talented students to benefit next year

He said these PEEF scholarships were for those millions of Pakistani children whose parents despite a difficult situation equipped their children with education.

The chief minister said the Punjab government had set up the biggest education endowment fund in the world for intelligent students of poor families to get education in local and foreign prestigious educational institutions.

Referring to the cooperation of UK’s Department For International Development (DFID) in education, he said the fund was extending full cooperation to the Punjab government in skills development, education and health.

He said the unconditional aid given by their friends was acceptable but conditional aid was not. He said that the cooperation of DFID in the provision of scholarship was also unconditional.

PEEF Vice-Chairman Dr Amjad Saqib said that today was a historic day as the target of 100,000 scholarships had been achieved under the PEEF since the launch of the programme seven years ago.

Punjab University Vice-Chancellor Dr Mujahid Kamran said the PEEF had brought about a revolutionary change in education and hundreds of thousands of students are getting education through this fund.

Judith Herbertson of the UK Aid said that PEEF was playing a very important role in the promotion of education and the UK would continue its cooperation with Punjab for promotion of education.

Published in Dawn, October 3rd , 2015

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