LAHORE, April 19: The four-day Vice-Chancellors’ Conference of 17 public sector universities of Punjab held to review the progress of public sector development programme of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) concluded here at the Governor’s House on Saturday.

According to a handout, Governor Khalid Maqbool presided over all sessions of the conference.

The conference revealed that 229 development projects had been completed during the last five years in the public sector universities at a cost of Rs950 million. These projects, included expansion of infrastructure of universities to accommodate newly-established academic departments besides the construction of new laboratories, lecture theaters, libraries, establishment of computer networking system and other paraphernalia.

The conference was told that 91 ongoing uplift schemes with a sum of Rs1,500 million would be completed during the current year under the PSDP in various public sector universities.

Speaking on the occasion, the governor stressed the need to prepare the PC-I of various proposed uplift projects for public sector universities according to the local needs and future requirements of the higher education sector so that the Planning Commission of Pakistan could grant technical sanction well in time.