MULTAN, Feb 17: Governor Khalid Maqbool has stressed the need for promoting knowledge-based economy. Speaking at the seventh convocation of the Bahauddin Zakariya University here on Tuesday , the governor said only those nations were leading the race of progress which had supremacy in the field of knowledge. He quoted the examples of Korea and Singapore in this regard.

He regretted that the situation in Pakistan was not encouraging as only 2.9 per cent population went to colleges and universities for higher education. He asked the university management to increase the number of students from the present 7,000 to 10,000 in two years, and to double it in five years.

He said some of the leading universities in the world were imparting education to as high a number of students as 100,000. "A qualified and research-minded faculty can only make a mark for a university rather than splendid buildings and vast area of land under its ownership," he said.

He said the progress the country was seeing at present in research in the fields of agriculture, engineering, information technology and pure sciences owed to the grants earmarked by the Higher Education Commission for the purpose.

He said the government had allocated Rs8 billion for education this year with an aim to increase the amount by 50 per cent every year to improve the education standard.

The governor underscored the need of a textile engineering college in Multan affiliated with the BZU. He directed that position holders in various subjects be absorbed in the university faculty to encourage them.

BZU vice-chancellor Prof Dr Ghulam Mustafa said a strategy had been evolved to make the university a centre of excellence in the fields of engineering, agriculture and sciences. He said the university was also focusing to promote social sciences to create a parallel society.

He said the university had registered some 242 scholars for M.Phil and 92 for PhDs this year, and Rs15 million were being spent on 47 research projects. Degrees to some 1,572 students were awarded at the convocation, including 15 PhDs and 17 M.Phils.

Later on, the governor visited the proposed Multan College of Arts, housed in a private building in Gulgashat Colony, and was surprised to see only girl students there. He was told that no boys' college in Multan offered the subject of fine arts. At this, he directed the district Nazim to introduce the subject in the area colleges.