“Whatever facility will be required, we would provide to people,” he said while talking to journalists after the 16th annual convocation of the Aga Khan University here.
The prime minister pointed out that Khokhrapar route was closed after the 1965 war and the government was now considering its reopening to facilitate the people.
In reply to a question regarding the National Finance Commission award, Mr Jamali said the next NFC meeting would be held in Lahore on Dec 13 in which the members would dilate on issues relating to distribution of resources among the province. However, it would be ensured that no injustice was done to any province, he added.
Responding to another question, the prime minister said he would be delighted to meet Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee on the occasion of the Saarc summit to be held in Islamabad next month.
He said Mr Vajpayee’s decision to attend the summit was a positive development and after this summit Pakistan and India would hopefully come closer.
He said improvement in relations between the two countries would bring peace to the region, besides economic stability and prosperity for the people.
In reply to a question about the MMA, the prime minister said that he had already spoken on this issue in detail.
Earlier, speaking at the convocation, Prime Minister Jamali said the government had “convincingly” shown that it was committed to upgrading and reforming education sector, because it was critical to Pakistan’s economic and social development.
New education initiatives were being implemented that would enhance primary school enrolment, increase training opportunities for teachers and school administrators, spread literacy and encourage public-private partnership for education, Mr Jamali said.
He said within these programmes many opportunities existed for cooperation between the government and the AKU — one of the region’s finest educational institutions with an international reputation.
The prime minister said his government was determined to improve quality of higher education. Through a task force instituted for the purpose, members of the AKU played a major role in helping to define what needed to be done to get things moving and achieving positive results in this field.
He said as Pakistan sought to find its way to full and competitive membership in the global economy, the nation needed many more institutions like the AKU. Pakistan needed support of its higher education institutions to bring about some of the long-awaited improvements, he added.
Mr Jamali said the Aga Khan’s faith in Pakistan was a source of inspiration for everyone of us. The continuous generosity of the Aga Khan was showing other members of society how philanthropic organizations, such as the AKDN, could lead in sustainable development, as also in supplementing work of the government, the prime minister added.
Mr Jamali urged the graduating doctors to employ specialized education to help under-privileged, ease suffering of sick without being motivated by money. “Remember no religion in human history has ever prescribed gathering of money for personal gain. Use your education to empower people and backward communities, help them replace despair, deprivation and hopelessness with optimism, opportunity and sense of well-being,” he added.
The Aga Khan, Chancellor of the Aga Khan University, emphasized that universities, in both the Muslim world and in the West, had “a greater obligation to promote intellectual openness and tolerance ... especially at times when ignorance, conflict and apprehension, are so rife”.
“Muslim universities, however, have a unique responsibility: to engender in their societies a new confidence. It must be a confidence based on intellectual excellence, but also on a refreshed and enlightened appreciation of the scientific, linguistic, artistic and religious traditions that underpin and give such global values to our own Muslim civilizations — even though it may be ignored or not understood by parts of the Ummah itself,” the Aga Khan observed.
He said feelings of subordination of people — that they were victims of an economic or cultural globalization in which they could not be full partners but from which they could not remain apart — (these feelings) fuel some of the “most potent, destructive forces at play in the world today.
“When people of a distinctive faith or culture feel economically powerless, or inherit clear injustice from which they cannot escape, or find their traditions and values engulfed culturally, and their societies maligned as bleak and unjust, some amongst them can too readily become vulnerable. They risk becoming victims of those who would gain power by perverting an open ... pluralistic tradition of thought ... into something closed, and insular,” said the Aga Khan.
“There is ... a need to mitigate not what is a clash of civilizations but a clash of ignorance where peoples ... are so ignorant ... that they are unable to find
a common language with which to communicate,” he said.
—APP/PPI