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Drive to improve education draws mixed response
IN A SERIOUS attempt to improve the standard of higher education in Pakistan, federal government has launched an ambitious $57-million programme to hire foreign faculty to teach students in public-sector universities.
The programme, initiated by the Chairman of the Higher Education Commission, Professor Atta-ur-Rahman, envisages employing 300 foreign professors. The programme shall be exclusively handled by a special Project Management Unit.
Pakistan’s academia has reacted to this decision in different ways, according to various media sources. Mathematics Professor Ismat Beg of the prestigious private sector Lahore University of Management Sciences, says, “The idea is excellent. It is education and application of technology which matters the most. Power and wealth are no more derived only from material sources, but from intellectual ones as well. We must remember the Meiji revolution in Japan.”
Meanwhile, Dr Muhammad Zakaria Zakar, Chairman, Department of Sociology, University of Punjab, dubbed the decision as “Strange, illogical and inexplicable. It implies that professors in Pakistan universities lack competence, exposure, and foreign qualifications, so we need imported professors to act as catalysts to energize their local counterparts.”
Dr Zakar points out that although the government is prepared to spend billions on the foreign faculty, it has utterly failed to increase the doctorate allowance of foreign-educated professors of social sciences and humanities.
He emphasizes that as a consequence of the government’s lopsided approach, many academics are seeking jobs abroad or taking long leave to work in the private sector.
Professor Beg disagrees, remarking, “The question is not the competence of Pakistani teachers, but the lack of scientists in the country. We need to attract more people.”
Prof Ehsan-ul-Haque, Dean of Graduate School of Business of the Lahore University of Management Sciences, believes, “Such a faculty will impart the latest ideas and fresh perspectives to academia. They will generate interesting research topics and debates for Phd students and give them proper guidance.”
“They will help to globalize Pakistani academia, a factor which is seriously lacking right now,” he emphasized, adding, “If we want technology/knowledge transfer we will have to pay the price.”
Another academic points out, “The real problem is not human resource but research infrastructure. University laboratories lack chemicals and equipment. Libraries cannot afford to buy expensive technical books and scientific research journals.”
But the government promises to rectify that too. According to Professor Atta-ur-Rahman the grant for public sector universities will be doubled from next year. The money will be used to develop advanced research, and provide better laboratory facilities and teachers. Students will be awarded generous stipends for pursuing doctorate courses.
Professor Rahman thinks, “This should help to raise standards in the country’s 44 public sector universities.”
Last month, federal government’s Central Development Working Party approved a Higher Education Commission scheme to provide Phd fellowships to 5,000 students. The eight-year project’s main objective is to stimulate research and development activities in government universities.
SEPA gets poor response
The Sindh Environmental Protection Agency is getting poor response from industries regarding the government scheme of self-monitoring and reporting of pollutants.
Sources in SEPA said that some three months back industries through their respective associations and chambers were approached to get themselves registered for “Self-monitoring and reporting tool (SMART)” so that a data on industrial effluents and gaseous emissions could be obtained regularly from them and compiled centrally.
“It is regrettable that we have, so far, received duly completed SMART forms from 10 industries only, including four those affiliated either with the Overseas Investors Chamber of Commerce or with the American Business Council of Pakistan,” informed the focal person for SMART at SEPA.
Under the Pakistan Environmental Protection Act of 1997 and the decisions of Pakistan Environmental Council, it is now mandatory for industries both in the public and private sectors to get themselves registered with their respective provincial EPA for the implementation of National Environmental Quality Standards (NEQS).
The legal basis for environment monitoring is provided in the Environmental Protection Act of 1997, under which the federal agency has been empowered to establish systems and procedures for surveys, surveillance, monitoring, measurement, examinations, investigation, research, inspection and audit to prevent and control pollution and to estimate the costs of cleaning up pollution and rehabilitating the environment in various sectors.
In the year 2002, about 23 industries from Sindh had volunteered for registration and subsequent submission of data on pollutants believed to be generated at their respective plants. It is pertinent to note here that industries are the major source of pollution and environmental degradation. — Dawn ScienceDotcom Report
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