PESHAWAR, Oct 2: NWFP Governor Ali Mohammad Jan Aurakzai on Tuesday said that an endowment fund of Rs65 million had been established as seed money to carry out education projects in Fata.

The governor said he had approached Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz to provide Rs200 million to further augment activities in the Fata Education Foundation which already had Rs110 million in its kitty for this purpose.

Mr Aurakzai was addressing a ceremony held at Governor’s House to distribute admission letters to the deserving students. The students have been selected from all seven agencies and six frontier regions through a competition arranged by a special committee on the establishment of centres of excellence in Fata and the province.

Under the scheme, all 126 students, including 13 girls, from Fata have got admission in 7th class in APS, Abbottabad; Agricultural University Public School and Islamia Collegiate School, Peshawar; Durrani Public School, Bannu; Fazal-e-College, Mardan; and Vensam College, D.I. Khan. Besides, 10 students have also got admission authorities in the HIT Education Academy, Taxela, under a free quality education project.

The governor said that one-third of the 1,000 seats in the under-construction new Islamia College in Swabi and 50 per cent of 800 seats in the new campus of the Institute of Management Sciences to be established in Fata would be meant for the students belonging to Fata.

He said that Rs60 million was being provided out of Fata’s budget for the Islamia College, Swabi, and 400 kanals of land had been arranged for the Institute of Management Sciences.

Mr Aurakzai said that to make the higher education accessible to maximum number of students, a new campus of the NWFP University of Engineering and Technology was also being established in Fata which would be followed by a series of similar institutions to be built in various tribal agencies in future.

The Overseas Pakistanis Foundation, he said, had been approached to establish a degree college in Fata.

He said the number of reserved seats for Fata students in medical colleges of the province had been increased from 95 to 125.—APP