MIANWALI: Allama Iqbal Open University Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Nazir Ahmed Sangi inaugurated regional campus of AIOU here on Wednesday.

The campus building spreading over 13,800 sq-ft has been completed at a cost of Rs92 million within 15 months instead of 24-month time frame.

It is one of the beautiful buildings in the district having facilities of conference rooms, video conference, media library, training centre hall, student survey desk, project labs for students, digital library, media research centre, workshop rooms and data management. In his address, the vice chancellor said: “Our mission is to spread education in every nook and corner of Pakistan because educational growth plays an important role in the progress of any country.

“This is the 42nd regional office in Pakistan and we are to build such offices in each district of the country subject to availability of land by the government.”

He said all regional centres were being built with AIOU’s own resources without any financial help from the government.

Dr Songi said the campus would cater to educational needs of Mianwali, Bhakkar and Khushab districts. “The Open University is among top 10 universities of the world and we have introduced an interest-free loan programme worth Rs20m for poor students.”

He said the computerised system would be introduced for students to get queries about their results and certificates through computer instead of travelling to Islamabad.

In his welcome address, Mianwali Campus Regional Director Hashim Khan said 60,000 students had been enrolled here and a separate campus was the need of the hour.