KARACHI, June 29: Students enrolled with the Petroman Training Institute (PTI), main campus, have sought immediate intervention of federal minister for science and technology Dr Atta-ur-Rehman to get their courses completed within the stipulated period.

The students of Master’s of Computer Science (MCS) in an appeal to the federal minister on Saturday said that because of the indifference of PTI management they were not only facing delay in completion of their course, but were also denied of subjects promised and mentioned in the prospectus.

Giving details of their plight these 100 students of MCS said they were enrolled with the PTI, in affiliation with the Shah Abdul Latif University, Khairpur, in September 2000 and had to complete all four semesters in September 2002, as mentioned in the MCS prospectus.

However, the programme at present appeared to be almost six months delayed, they added.

“We are still in the third semester,” they complained, mentioning that while the students were supposed to receive the detailed course outline of all subjects in the beginning of each semester. But it was issued to them in the last month of the semester.

“The course outline of III semester (January-June 2002) was issued to us in June 2002,” they said.

According to the students in their first semester Computer Graphics was included in the programme just one week prior to the university examinations.

The students were forced to appear in the examinations after one-week coaching period, while under rules they are required to complete 54 hours of study of each subject before appearing in the examinations.

They mentioned that during the current (third semester), the PTI management has introduced Real Time Operating Systems in the last month of the semester (June 2002).

Ironically, since the management was not sure whether it was Real Time Operating Systems or Real Time Systems, thus only after two classes of Real Time Operating Systems the management decided that it was actually Real Time Systems.

“In the given situation when we were expected to complete 54 hours of study we were asked to appear in the mid-term examinations only after four hours of study of Real Time Systems,” the students said.

The MCS students also regretted that there was not any PhD in the faculty.—APP