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Agreement for desalination plants signed
A PRELIMINARY agreement for the installation of two seawater desalination plants of 25Mgd each — one at Korangi and the other at Bin Qasim — was signed in Karachi recently.
The agreement was signed by Brig Iftekhar Ahmed on behalf of the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board and by Samiullah Khan, representative of the California Environment Management Inc of the US.
Speaking on the occasion the nazim of Karachi, Niamatullah Khan, said water was life and in future wars could be fought over it. Pakistan needed more dams but consensus over the construction of Kalabagh Dam was yet to materialize because of differences between provinces.
Similarly, Pakistan’s relations with India were improving, but dispute over Baglihar Dam remained to be be resolved despite. In view of these conditions, he pointed, he had been discussing the possibility of desalination plants with many companies, but the scheme could not could materialize until Samiullah Khan offered to install two desalination plants of 25Mgd each on Built, Own and Operate basis.
The nazim said the city government would practically invest nothing in the project as the entire funding would come from the California-Environment Management Inc, which would be selling water to the consumers.
Earlier, Brig Iftekhar Hyder said the two plants would be built with US technology, as a gift from the America people. He said desalinated water would be supplied to industrial units and affluent people who afforded to buy water.
Computer literacy
Federal Education Minister, Lt Gen (R) Javed Ashraf, recently underscored the need for promoting computer education and bridging the digital divide so that economic progress could be made quickly.
He stated this while speaking as chief guest at the Intel Education Awards Ceremony 2004-05, which was organized by Intel Pakistan Corporation in collaboration with the ministry of education to appreciate the services of outstanding schools and teachers.
Awards amounting to Rs700,000 were presented on the occasion. The institutions that were presented awards were: Bahria College, Karachi; Government Postgraduate College for Women, Gujranwala; Sanjan Nagar Public School for Girls, Lahore; Lahore Lyceum, Lahore; The Lahore School of Arts and Sciences, Lahore; Springfield Public School, Rawalpindi; and Teach a Child, Lahore.
The minister said collaboration with Intel would help the government train teachers about the use of technology in the classroom and would also help bridge the digital gap in the country.
Pakistan was on its way to economic stability and wanted to strengthen education is an integral tool to achieving that end, he said. He added that the country's future depended on quality schools.
Digital library
Pakistan has emerged as the only country across the globe having a digital library comprising 17,000 science journals. The library is aimed at developing the human resources.
Chairman of the Higher Education Commission, Prof Atta- ur-Rehman stated this while speaking at the foundation laying ceremony of a cooperative housing society recently. He said the government was intent on developing on sound grounds the available human resources.
According to him, it was with this motive that overseas Pakistani researchers and scientists were being persuaded, in the shape of incentives, to return to their country. As a direct result of the scheme 256 university teachers had joined different postgraduate Pakistani institutions during the last two years.
The professor said Pakistan happened to be among the countries where education was largely neglected during the first 50 years of its existence. With a view to focussing on science and technology, a prerequisite for economic development, the government had attempted to strengthen the telecommunication department, ultimately paving the way for public accessibility to cellphones at extremely affordable rates.
Reverting to the country’s digital library he said it was not only benefitting the researchers and scientists but students as well.
‘Smartphone’ launched
Nokia, the telecommunication giant, recently launched its 9300 Smartphone in Pakistan. The corporation describes the cellphone as a ‘must-have’ device.
A press release claimed that the Nokia 9300 Smartphone was the “best all-in-one device for users, regardless of their lifestyles.” It has an 80MB memory that is expandable to 2GB. The memory is sufficient for storing emails, documents, presentations, text and multimedia messages, data files, calendar notes and to-do lists. — Sci-tech World Report
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