SWABI, Sept 24: NWFP Governor Khalilur Rehman on Saturday inaugurated the three-day All Pakistan Software Competition — Softcom 2005 — at the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute (GIKI) of Engineering Sciences and Technology.

There will be competitions in software, multimedia, quiz and speed programming at the event organized by the Association for Computing Machinery. Over 200 students from 22 universities and institutions of the country are taking part in the competition.

Speaking on the occasion, the governor said that Softcom was a good effort by the students of GIKI to bring together young professionals, programmers, developers, executives and analysts.

“I would take this opportunity to call upon the participants and the invited colleges and universities to get engaged in holding events of this kind as these are occasions where brains meet and ideas are exchanged,” he said.

He said excellence in software development was must for boosting the national economy. Therefore, he added, such activities should be organized.

The Rector of the institute, Dr Abdullah Sadiq, said the event had provided an opportunity to students of various institutions to interact with each other and share new ideas in IT field.

The winning teams would be awarded Rs200,000 cash prize.