KARACHI, Feb 5: The chairman of the Higher Education Commission and federal minister, Prof Attaur Rehman, has said that the HEC is facing three big challenges — poor quality of education, a very small percentage of students having access to higher education and relevance of higher education -- and this could not be met by the mushroom growth of substandard universities.

He said this while addressing the graduation ceremony of healthcare professionals who completed the one-year diploma programme in Biomedical Ethics at the Centre of Biomedical Ethics and Culture (CBEC), Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT).

The HEC chairman congratulated the graduating professionals and praised the work of CBEC and SIUT. Quoting the example of Prof Adibul Hasan Rizvi, he said that it required hard work and dedication to achieve success in building institutions.

He also talked about the upcoming nine universities which would work in collaboration with foreign universities, the first two with France and Sweden.

Earlier, Prof Adibul Hasan Rizvi welcomed the chief guest, the graduating doctors, other guests and faculty members.

He said the SIUT started its post-graduation programme with Master’s in Surgery in 1987 with the first recipient being Prof Anwar Naqvi.

He added that this programme was continued and now there were 12 postgraduates in Urology and Nephrology and the credit of this went to the dedication and hard work of the entire Sindh Institute of Urology and Transplantation (SIUT) team.

He praised efforts of Dr Farhat Moazzam, who had begun her career as a General Surgeon and later voluntarily entered the field of Ethics and is now the only qualified Ethicist in Pakistan. She was running the Centre of Biomedical Ethics and Culture (CBEC) very efficiently and had now enrolled students for the 2007 batch, he said. Dr Farhat Moazzam expressed satisfaction over the output of the last batch who had designed different modules for their institutions. She said the faculty had also learnt along with the students as it was an initial experience.

Later, Prof Attaur Rehman also gave away certificates to the successful candidates.

It may be noted that Prof Attaur Rehman had inaugurated the centre in October 2004.—PPI