LAHORE: The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) on Thursday awarded scholarships to 84 talented students enrolled in a four-year Bachelors’ Degree in Education in eight universities of Punjab.

The scholarship recipients are studying at Punjab University, Lahore College for Women University, University of Education, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan; University of Gujrat, Islamia University Bahawalpur; Fatima Jinnah Women University, Rawalpindi; and Government College University, Faisalabad.

The awards ceremony was held at Punjab University as a part of $165 million USAID-funded Pakistan Reading Project, which is working closely with 28 Pakistani universities and 116 elementary teacher colleges across Pakistan.

Speaking on the occasion, USAID Senior Education Adviser Muhammad Tariq Khan acknowledged that students’ hard work was responsible for the achievement.

Mr Khan said USAID was working with each province of Pakistan to customise educational programmes based on regional priorities, including system-strengthening, policy reforms, and better management of teacher education programmes.

He said the Pakistan Reading Project was working closely with the Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan, provincial education departments and teacher training institutions across the country.

He said USAID was also working to build or rehabilitate more than 850 schools in the country, establish centres for advanced education studies at four Pakistani universities, enhance English skills for more than 5,000 low-income students, and award more than 4,800 scholarships for university students to pursue education through the Pakistan-USAID Merit and Needs Based Scholarship Program.

Chief of Party Pakistan Reading Project John Shumaker said USAID wanted ensuring imparting of quality education at primary level and providing scholarships to those students who wanted to become a teacher by choice.

PU Vice-Chancellor Dr Mujahid Kamran said the people of US were the greatest asset of mankind but they were under the control of world’s financial elite. He said the Muslim world had no contribution to creation of new knowledge and these were the two problems the world was facing. He said the Islamic world was weak because of ignorance and therefore invited aggression from the corporate-controlled West.

Faculty of Education dean Prof Dr Mumtaz Akhter also spoke on the occasion. LCWU Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Sabiha Mansoor and IUB VC Prof Dr Muhammad Mukhtar were also present on the occasion.

RESULTS: The PU examinations department on Thursday declared the results of MSc Home Economics Part-I annual exam for 2013 and BS in Computer Science third year second annual examination for 2012 and first annual exam 2013.