HARIPUR: The University of Haripur Vice-Chancellor Prof Anwarul Hassan Gilani has said the varsity will help preserve and tap the district’s rich natural and cultural resources for the people’s prosperity.

He announced this while speaking to mediapersons here on Wednesday. He said vegetables and fruits of Haripur enjoyed national and international recognition, and the varsity was ready to divert its intellectual resources towards economic betterment of the locals.

“Haripur also houses several famed Buddhist sites, including the world’s first university of Julian,” said Dr Gilani, adding the cultural sites would be part of the tourism promotion programme that the varsity was soon launching. He said being situated alongside the CPEC route with the country’s third largest industrial zone Haripur had great potential of economic development through entrepreneurship.

He said the number of departments had risen to 20 and 12 new departments were in the pipeline. About the launch of languages department, he said besides English, Chinese and some international languages, the varsity planned to have Hindko language department as it was the language of local majority. He claimed that the varsity’s fees were much lower than the private universities, but educational environment and facilities had no match.

The VC said the students’ character building was one of the objectives of the university, adding Urdu translation of Holy Quran had been made compulsory so students could learn about the true message of the holy book.

On sexual harassment of students and teachers, Dr Hassan said each student, teacher and staff member had been asked to comply with the code conduct.

The VC admitted that only one case of sexual harassment had occurred during his one and a half year’s tenure, and the guilty had been dismissed from service.

He said a special fund had been developed for welfare of prisoners, adding the varsity was financially supporting the jail inmates in getting education.

Published in Dawn, October 8th, 2020