LAHORE: The Punjab Higher Education Department (HED) has asked the Punjab Higher Education Commission (PHEC) to hold an inquiry into allegations of misuse of authority and corruption against its director.

The HED received a complaint from the CAM Foundation, Rawalpindi, which said, “We applied for the grant of charter of National Excellence Institute by fulfilling the initial requirements.

An employee of PHEC Nouman Maqbool Rao offered us his services to prepare the feasibility study for grant of charter of institute. For this purpose, he agreed to prepare the feasibility study and help us to obtain the charter on fast track and demanded Rs300,000. We gave him Rs100,000 as cash and Rs100,000 were transferred to his personal bank account and remaining was to be paid after grant of charter.”

The complaint said the foundation did not get any grant of charter after fulfilling all legal requirements and demanded action against PHEC director Nouman Maqbool Rao for taking money and not facilitating them.

The HED took notice of the complaint, available with Dawn, and directed PHEC Chairman Dr Fazal Khalid to inquire into the allegations.

A senior officer of the PHEC, on condition of anonymity, told Dawn that they had received the complaint against Mr Nouman and a committee had been constituted to conduct an inquiry.

stem contest: Punjab government on Sunday announced conducting the first Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) competition in all elementary and high schools of the province.

Sharing details of the contest on its twitter handle, the School Education Department

(SED) said the participants could submit one-minute videos on themes of viruses, energy, calculus, astronomy, area and volume, environment, agriculture and physical science. The winner would be declared ‘super scientist’.

The videos must be submitted via WhatsApp to the Senior Data Processor (SDP) of the respective districts before January 18, 2020.

Published in Dawn, January 18th, 2021