BAHAWALPUR: The Rahman Trust of the Quaid-i-Azam Medical College (QAMC) has been activated after about two decades by Prof Dr Khwaja Haroon Khurshid Pasha, the principal of the institute.

The trust established by the late Gen Attiqur Rehman, who was the Punjab governor in 1982, has been made functional on the initiative of her daughter Begum Shaheen Attiqur Rehman, a former minister and social activist.

The trust (mainly an endowment fund) was set up on May 18, 1982 by the then Punjab governor to grant scholarships out of the profit (interest) amount of the fixed deposit of about Rs400,000 to the deserving students of the QAMC. Gen Attiq donated his agriculture land measuring 176 acres situated at Taulka Rato Dero of Sindh’s Larkana district to the QAMC.

He laid the foundation stone of the medical college on Dec 2, 1971 and during a visit to the college in the temporary building of a government vocational school, rejected the students’ suggestion that the institute be named after him.

He deposited the amount with a local bank on July 13, 1982 for five years and it increased to Rs600,000 in 1987 and Rs2 million in 1997 but its major chunk remained undistributed among the eligible students. At present, the total amount stands at Rs6.3 million.

Former QAMC administrator the late Chaudhry Rehmatullah (an eye specialist) and noted lawyer Najmuddin Leghari were among its founder trustees in addition to the nomination of the Punjab health secretary who could rarely meet. Once they met in 1994 and granted the stipends to some college students at the rate of Rs250 a month. Later, the stipend amount was enhanced to Rs400.

After the death of the trustees, none of the former principals took its notice and the trust became inoperative with the result that the amount remained unutilised.

The QAMC principal told Dawn that after Begum Shaheen Attiqur Rehman drew his attention to the issue, he scrutinised the college records and bank statements and decided to revive the trust to enable the deserving students to benefit from the trust.

The trust, he said, would be registered with the Punjab Social Welfare Department for its proper functioning in future. He said a committee would look into the affairs of the trust and would be responsible for distributing stipend to the medical college students.

The committee headed by the college principal will include as members a representative of the Punjab health secretary (MS Bahawal Victoria Hospital), Prof Dr Sardar Fakhr Imam, principal, Fatima Jinnah Medical College, Lahore as the representative of donor’s heir Begum Shaheen Attiqur Rehman, Prof Dr Ijlal Haider Rizvi as representative of the QAMC academic council and Malik Habibullah in place of trust’s founding member the late Najmuddin Leghari.

According to the principal, the stipend amount will be increased from Rs400 to Rs60,000 per scholarship keeping in view the enhanced tuition fee plus hostel expenditure of the boarders.

Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2015

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