LAHORE, Aug 25: The Board of Revenue Educational Endowment Fund established from Rs550 million provided by the Punjab Land Commission has become operational and will start awarding scholarships within two weeks.

The fund will pay tuition fee of the needy talented students studying in government medical colleges and engineering, veterinary and agricultural universities. Day scholars and boarders in high science education institutions will be paid scholarships of Rs12,000 and Rs18,000, respectively, in the next two weeks.

The decision to make the fund operational and starting payment of the scholarships were taken at a meeting of the Endowment Fund Board of Trustees held here on Monday with Governor Khalid Maqbool in the chair.

Scholarship committees comprising principals and two senior most professors were also constituted for all medical colleges. The university scholarship committees will comprise vice-chancellors and two senior most professors.

It was decided to allocate Rs35 million per annum from the fund profit accruing from investment in different schemes to award scholarships to 2,100 students of professional colleges and universities every year. A retired BoR official was appointed the secretary of the Board of Trustees of the Educational Endowment Fund.

The governor directed the heads of the scholarship committees to ensure selection of the deserving students and disbursement of scholarships by Sept 15. He said the committees should ensure award of scholarships to the talented students of the poor families. The students seeking admission on a self-finance basis would not benefit from the scheme. The students awarded merit scholarships by the Punjab government or any other educational scholarship scheme would have to chose between the financial assistance available under that scheme or the BoR’s educational endowment scholarship.

He said the payment of scholarships would be discontinued if the recipients failed in an examination. He said the government would meet education expenses of every talented student whose parents were unable to pay the fees. He expressed the hope that private universities would also allow free admissions to talented students of the families with limited resources on 20 per cent seats.