CHITRAL: A donors’ conference titled ‘Chitral Scholarship Summit 2019’ was held here on Saturday organised by Regional Organisation for Supporting Education (ROSE). Noted academicians and philanthropists from across the country attended the moot and termed higher education vital for speedy development of Chitral.

Former chairman of geography department of the University of Peshawar Prof Israruddin, columnist Haroon Rashid, academicians Dr Inayatullah Faizi, Dr Nasirullah Ishaq, Prof Mohammad Bilal, Prof Mohammad Riaz Danish and others spoke on the occasion and said Chitral was still lagging behind in the field of higher education due to rampant poverty.

They said there was no dearth of talent among the students in the area but a large number of them had to discontinue their studies at different stages solely due to poverty.

They said that a large number of students wanted to pursue higher education and even qualified the admission tests for different programmes but financial constraints made it a distant dream for them, while in many cases the students discontinued their studies even in the public sector universities of medical and engineering due to poverty.

They appreciated the contribution of ROSE in financially strengthening the talented students of Chitral to enable them to pursue higher studies in colleges and universities, thereby saving their talents from being wasted.

The speakers urged the people of Chitral to rise to the occasion and lend a helping hand to those striving for promotion of higher education by pooling resources so that no talented student missed his or her higher studies.

They announced a number of scholarships in different programmes ranging from medical to engineering and information technology to management sciences and humanities.

The chairman of ROSE, Hedayatullah told the gathering that during a short span of eight years, his organisation had facilitated more than 500 students by providing them full and partial concession in fees apart from meeting their expenses of boarding and lodging in hostels.

On the occasion, a number of beneficiaries of ROSE scholarships described their success stories and told the conference how the organisation helped them in pursuing their studies in universities.

One of the beneficiaries was engineer Hina Rahman who was helped to study software engineering in a Lahore university and now she is working in a senior position of a UK-based IT company in Lahore while also supporting five needy girl students of Chitral.

Published in Dawn, July 7th, 2019