LAHORE: Governor Rafique Rajwana has said that education must be based on knowledge.

Addressing the Punjab University’s 124th convocation at Faisal Auditorium here on Saturday, he asked students to consume their energies on education as they were a ray of hope for bright future of the country.

Appreciating a visually-impaired student of PU Law College, Yousaf Saleem, who obtained a gold medal in LLB-Hons programme, the governor said: “We must learn the art of living from such students. Pakistan is now making progress in the field of education and efforts are being made for promotion of education at federal and provincial level and the Punjab Higher Education Commission has been set up in this regard.”

In his welcome address, Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Mujahid Kamran said Muslims were being killed in Syria and other countries and they were facing destruction because they were not contributing to creation of new knowledge.

He said: “In his book ‘Body Count’ Australian Jewish scientist Gideon Polya said there had been 1.3 billion avoidable deaths during the period 1950-2005 of which 600 million were Muslims.

Dr Kamran said in the recent Afghan war, around 4.9m Afghans had been killed out of whom 1.2m were killed in bombings etc and 3.7m died of diseases and lack of medicines till 2010. He said 2.7m Iraqis were killed in the recent Iraq war and five million children had become orphan.

He said America’s GDP was around $17 trillion and it spent two to three per cent - $340 to $510 billion - on research and development per year while Pakistan had a GDP of around $225 billion and it was spending only 0.2pc on research and development per year.

The governor later gave away medals and degrees among the students.

Some 128 PhD, 579 MPhil/MS, 256 Master’s, 182 undergraduate degrees and 160 medals were distributed among students

Meanwhile, renowned lawyer and former Senator S.M. Zafar and intellectual of Punjabi literature Faqir Ahmad Faqir have been awarded honorary degrees in the subjects of law and Punjabi, respectively, by the PU in the convocation.

Religious leader Maulana Raghib Husain Naeemi also obtained his PhD degree in Islamic Studies.

Scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, Chairman HEC Punjab Dr Nizamuddin, VCs of various varsities, deans and senior faculty members were present on the occasion.

EXAMS: The Punjab University has notified that written and practical papers of various examinations which were scheduled to be held on Dec 16 and were postponed as per Punjab government’s instructions, will now be conducted on Dec 23.

Published in Dawn, December 20th, 2015