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Rs10bn allocated for education, says minister
FEDERAL Science and Technology Minister and Higher Education Commission Chairman Dr Attaur Rahman has said that Rs10 billion has been allocated to improve the education standard and provision of research facilities in universities.
The minister met Balochistan Governor Owais Ahmed Ghani last week and discussed promotion of information technology and the resolution of problems being faced by the universities in the province.
They were also joined by the vice-chancellors of Balochistan University, Balochistan University of Information technology and Management Sciences, and Balochistan University of Engineering, Khuzdar.
The commission had prepared a plan to improve the education standard, the minister said and added that instead of establishing new universities or constructing buildings priority would be given to the performance of existing institutions.
Elaborating the plan, he said Rs3.5 billion would be utilized to get services of qualified teachers from abroad and within the country for the universities.
He said Rs6.5 billion would be spent for PhD research facilities to facilitate 5,000 students and teachers.
Rs35m approved for hi-tech lab
The Higher Education Commission has approved a Rs35 million project to establish high tech central resource laboratory at the University of Sindh, Jamshoro.
The project has been approved in the recently-held meeting of Departmental Development Working Party, said an official statement.
Under the scheme, a centralized resource library would be set up at the Sindh University for common use of all the existing centres, institutes and departments of the university.
It would be equipped with the latest sophisticated equipments to cater the research and development needs of the students, researchers and faculty members of the university.
Research on medicinal plants
NWFP Science and Technology Minister Hussain Ahmed Kanju has called upon the agriculture scientists and experts to carry out extensive research on crops, medicinal plants and in the field of biotechnology with a view to introducing quality and inexpensive medicines in the market.
This he said while addressing the participants of short courses arranged by the USAID for Afghans on “water management and irrigation” and “enterprise development” at Agriculture University here on Saturday.
He advised the IT professionals to develop Urdu, Pushto and Persian software on a priority basis as it had a great scope in Central Asia, Afghanistan and Iran. He said they could get tips from the Arabic software.
Three held for software piracy
Police claimed last week to have arrested three unauthorized software sellers and seized 2,554 CDs during a raid.
“Now they will face penalties for the infringement of the copyright, which prohibits use and sale of software without getting permission from its owner,” according to Business Software Alliance, a body of the world’s leading computer companies formed to curb software piracy.
A press release quoted a BSA (Middle East) official as saying, “such surprise raids will continue throughout Pakistan to encourage software producers, create job opportunities and increase government revenue.”
He said the raids were conducted when these people were found selling pirated computer programmes by copying them on hard disks of new machines.” The four computers loaded with pirated software were also confiscated by the police, to be produced as an evidence for court, he said, naming these programmes as Windows 98, Office 2000, PhotoShop, Visual C++, Norton anti-Virus, Office 97 and AutoCAD.
The official has asked all the companies to immediately delete unlicensed software and buy the authorized products from the reputable dealers to avoid legal action.
Despite the establishment of a network of legal software sellers of the BSA members in the major cities, about 80 per cent software business in Pakistan was still illegal, he said.
IT in health sector
Health Minister Mohammad Nasir Khan has said computer-based information technology must be applied for planning of health programmes in the country.
He was speaking at the concluding ceremony of “Training Courses for Health Communication Planning Through Computer-based Module CDcynergy” held here.
The health minister asked the participants to also educate their colleagues on how to use the computer to plan and evaluate the health programmes. These plans for the health programmes, he said, must be evidence-based, cost-effective and efficiently implemented.
The motto should be implementation, implementation and implementation, the minister repeated and emphasized that there was no use of plans, no matter how finely prepared, if these were not implemented.
Director General Health Mohammad Aslam while giving details of the training course said CDcynergy module was a planning tool that will help the participants to prepare communication plans with the help of computer.
“This module will guide in identification and analysis of health problems. It will also assist in developing communication strategy to change behaviour and evaluate their impact.” — Dawn ScienceDotcom Report
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