ISLAMABAD, March 23: The government plans setting up of a multi-billion-dollar fund for software export, as 40,000 professionals are required just to earn $1 billion, Federal Science and Technology Minister Prof Attaur Rehman says.

He was speaking at the launching ceremony of the Virtual University at PTV headquarters here on Saturday. The varsity was formally inaugurated by President Gen Pervez Musharraf, and it would start functioning on 26 of this month.

The minister described the huge human resource in the country as “the new oil reservoir of the 21st century”, and stressad, the need to developing and streamlining it to meet the modern day challenges.

Lack of emphasis on education in the past has resulted in the existing digital divide between the advanced world and the Muslim states, he said.

“Our endeavour is to produce skilled human resources with an industrial vision, that can be absorbed by the domestic as well as international market”, Mr Atta said. The Virtual University aims at bringing together a quality IT faculty to provide world-class education to a large number of students in both urban and remote areas, he added.

He made assurances that the varsity would provide education at affordable price through public sector institutions. The government, he said, was also concentrating on developing a local market, where the students could be absorbed after graduating. The academia has lost a large number of qualified individuals to the software industry, both at home and abroad, and this loss has not been replenished, he lamented.

At present, the minister said, the country was producing 8,000 to 10,000 IT graduates annually, who could not contribute much to the national development as most of them lacked international level skills. The number of highly qualified professionals needs to be increased, if Pakistan wants to make progress on the information technology road, he added.

Dr Atta said the university’s per-student fee would be confined to Rs1445. Initially, 1,000 students are to be enrolled in the Bachelor of Computer Sciences (BCS) programme, but their number will be increased to 25,000 and 200,000 by 2003 and 2007, respectively.

The university, he said, was a distance-learning programme that aimed at delivering high-quality education to the people through a formal setup. Classes will be held through television, and internet is to provide students-interaction.

Initially, PTV2 will be telecasting two-hour computer programmes, while a proposal is being considered to launch a separate TV channel for Virtual University and other educational programmes, the minister said.

The education channel will also be linked with the new satellite being launched by the year’s end. This will make viewing of the programmes possible at Central Asian countries, Far East, Africa and Afghanistan, he said.

The cable TV operators, he added, were also duty-bound under the contract to offer viewing of educational channels. This way, the varsity programmes will reach four million homes.

Earlier, the university rector, Dr Naveed Malik, said the virtual university concept was new to Pakistan, though its application was of profound importance as it provided education regardless of geographical boundaries.

The university is launching the first phase of its programme through associated private sector campuses throughout the country, he said, adding there were 28 centres in 18 cities. Moreover, the teaching model developed indigenously is scalable and can handle more than 0.1 million to 0.2 million students in various fields.