ISLAMABAD, Jan 18: The departmental development working party of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has approved a project to establish Comsats Institute of Information Technology (CIIT) campus in Lahore.

The chairman HEC, Dr Attaur Rehman, said the Rs39 million project would be a part of phase-I of National University of Engineering and Information Technology (NUEIT), Lahore, being developed under the auspices of Comsats.

The campus will function under the overall supervision of the IT and Telecom Division, he added.

The project aims at providing IT education facilities to the students of the country in general and Punjab in particular.

The chairman said education imparted to students at the campus would help in developing human resources to fulfil the needs of local IT market as well as the export market.

“It will enhance the skills of people and produce a pool of well-trained professionals. It will also promote IT activities and contribute towards the development of IT industry.”

The chairman said Punjab government had been asked to assume all administrative, managerial and financial obligations and convert the campus into an independent IT university under the charter granted by the provincial government.

Alternatively, the campus will function as CIIT, Lahore campus, he added.

Meanwhile, a 3-day high-level meeting of National Curriculum Revision Committee (NCRC) of the HEC has prepared a draft curriculum of Biotechnology at BSc and MSc level.

The draft curriculum will be forwarded to universities and institutions of higher learning to seek comments for further improvement.

The comments/suggestions received will be incorporated in the final draft curriculum, while a final meeting in this regard is scheduled to be held on June 3-5, 2003.

Dr Ata said the committee had recommended that Biotechnology should be included as an elective subject at BSc level.

The committee also recommended that professional institutions like agriculture universities should introduce a degree course of agricultural biotechnology.