ISLAMABAD, Aug 28: The government will soon introduce tenure track appointment system in all the public sector universities of the country to reward the outstanding scholars, announced federal minister and Chairman Higher Education Commission (HEC) Prof Attaur Rehman here on Thursday.

He was laying the foundation stone of Attaur Rehman Research Complex (ARC) at Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU) here. The estimated cost of the project is Rs30 million and it will be complete in 18 months.

Mr Rehman said he was writing letters to all the vice chancellors of the universities to implement the system that would help improve the quality of education and research in the country.

Explaining, he said under the plan, a professor would be appointed for three years in different universities on contractual basis with a salary package ranging between Rs50,000- Rs120,000 per month. On showing performance, the contract could be extended to another three years, he added.

The research work of the teacher would be strictly evaluated after which his services would be regularised, he said explaining that the purpose of the scheme was to attract best possible people from abroad and within the country.

He said an amount of Rs3.5 billion had also been allocated to attract the services of 300 PhDs every year from abroad by offering them a salary package of Rs150,000 to 250,000 per month.

He also asked the AIOU management to transform the ARC into a centre of excellence by forming a committee and involving renowned scientists to guide in which frontier the university should venture since there were a lot of fields where the world had already progressed.

He also suggested that the theses of PhD students of the university should be evaluated in advanced countries. He also asked the university management to build a system to automatically get rid of the second rate stuff.

Mr Rehman said the government was also introducing a digital library for all the universities in which 5,000 journals would be available for the students in addition to 30,000 abstracts of different journals.

Earlier, AIOU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Syed Altaf Hussain said the construction of the ARC would strengthen the efforts of the government to develop science and technology in the country.

The three-storey building will have 13 research and teaching laboratories each, two analytical labs, two chemical stores, one main ware house, one seminar library, one reading area, 24 offices and faculty rooms and one multi-purpose hall.