PESHAWAR, Jan 9: Lack of funds, staff and equipments have been affecting the performance of the Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (PCSIR), officials told Dawn on Thursday.

The council, established in 1958 in Peshawar with a view to develop the indigenous natural resources, like mineral, medicinal plants, fruits and wool etc into value-added and exportable goods and promote local industry.

Likewise, four divisions-mineral technology division, natural drugs division, fruit technology division and wool research division, were established to undertake qualitative and quantitative survey of the local resources and carry out its systematic evaluation for their industrial and commercial utilisation.

Lack of funds have hampered the performance of the PCSIR, which can be gauged from the fact that it has been receiving only Rs 75,000 annually for research. Bulk of the its total annual grant of Rs 40 million goes in the salaries of the staff, electricity and telephone and maintenance cost.

Former for science and technology minister, Dr Attaur Rehman, sanctioned a grant of Rs 1.3 billion to enable these multi-purpose laboratories to establish linkage with the local industries and develop the natural resources into exportable goods. Similarly, another grant of Rs 35 million was sanctioned a year back to modernise the PCSIR. Additionally, 10 scientists are being appointed on contract basis to strengthen research.

Despite lack of fund and staff, the PCSIR has been able to manufacture cost effective medicinal products, chemicals, food products and machinery, including bread and biscuit plants, etc. It has so far published 600 research papers in national and international scientific journals. The scientists say that they had not been receiving research books from the last one decade which has caused them a blow.

The initial period of five years from 1958 to 1963 of its establishment, had largely been devoted to survey of minerals, drugs, wool and fruit resources of the region, which proved very useful not only for regional laboratories but also for other laboratories and industries. Based on these surveys, some of the applied projects were completed and  positive results were achieved in industrial projects, which were then leased out for commercial exploitation.

Some of the projects were soft drinks, fungicidal formulation for paper industry, opium alkaloids, extraction of ephedrine, formulation and development of technology for liquorice products, production of chloral and high concentrated bleach from urea.

Unfortunately, the process of induction of qualified manpower was discontinued, because many scientists either got retired or left the country for Europe, USA and Canada. The number of research scientists was 25 in 1970, which has now declined to only 13.