PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Education Foundation (KPEF) has digitised the entire process of awarding scholarships to deserving students and eradicated discretion with introduction of auto-generated quantification mechanism.

Previously, questions were raised on the manual mechanism, red tape, unnecessary delay in payment of amount to the students selected for scholarships, according to officials.

Zareeful Mani, the managing director of KPEF, told Dawn that in the selection criteria of applicants and discipline, more importance was given to the students belonging to financially poor background and emerging sciences.

He said that KPEF signed memorandums of understanding (MoUs) with 20 universities including Lahore University of Management Sciences (Lums), Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi, Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, Swabi, and major public sector universities functioning in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

KPEF head says merit list will be automatically generated with submission of applications

“We have created separate dashboards for each university for submitting applications by the students, who apply for scholarships,” he said. He said that merit list would automatically be generated with the submission of applications at each university.

“Proper weight has been given to academic marks, low income of applicants and emerging sciences in awarding scholarships,” he said.

Mr Mani said previously students would visit KPEF office for receiving cheques for submitting with the relevant universities but now they started work on developing a mechanism to directly submit the fees of students.

He said that KPEF was short of funds due to which it was unable to award scholarships to many deserving and talented students, who desired to continue their higher education in different universities.

He said that last year more than 5,000 students applied for scholarships but KPEF was able to award scholarships to around 100 of them.

He said that provincial government allocated only Rs30 million for scholarships in higher education.

“Now we have developed a transparent system for selection of students. I appeal to the government, donors and individuals to help the foundation in releasing more funds for helping many deserving students,” said Mr Mani.

He said that they were also targeting banking sectors and corporate companies that could support the noble cause of awarding scholarships to students.

“We are supporting deserving students including orphans, physically-challenged persons, registered for Zakat, EHSAS and BISP registered families, low income and academically strong students with proper verification system online and physically through scholarship committees by each university,” he said.

By digitising the entire process, he said, they were able to show a complete trace and track of each student to donors at a high level of satisfaction.

He said that currently, KPEF was supporting four-year BS and two-year MS degrees programmes in all leading universities of the country.

“We want to start supporting students at PhD level in both national and international universities to develop human resource of the country,” said Mr Mani.

Published in Dawn, December 23rd, 2024