LAHORE, Jan 2: The chief minister says laptops worth Rs8 billion are being distributed to talented students ensuring merit. The government has also included brilliant students from Azad Kashmir, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Gilgit-Baltistan, Sindh and Balochistan in this programme.

At the laptop distribution ceremony at the University of Engineering and Technology, Lahore, on Wednesday, Shahbaz Sharif said the PML-N government, if elected in the next general election, would distribute three times more laptops to the students so that an information technology revolution could be set in.

“The laptop programme is such a revolutionary and welfare-oriented project by the Punjab government, which future governments will not be able to end,” he asserted.

Those raising slogans of change in the country, the chief minister said, should realize that free laptops for brilliant students, an internship programme for postgraduates, provision of scholarships for students belonging to poor families and presenting guard of honour to the talented and hard-working students was the real change.

He said that he believed that the students, through these laptops, would be able to find out how to eliminate corruption from the country and design several projects like Bus Rapid Transport.

Mr Sharif said that on time elections were essential for the survival of Pakistan. He said some imported elements wanted to shatter the hopes of people of the country but the masses would foil their evil designs. He said that people would bring forward such a leadership in the next general elections, which was able to uphold the interests of the country.

He said “Zar Baba and 40 thieves” had destroyed the industrial and agriculture sectors of the country. He said people had expectations from democracy but the corrupt rulers of Islamabad had disappointed them.

UET Vice-Chancellor Muhammad Akram said that 6,423 students of the university would receive laptops in the first phase while another 3,000 students would get in the second phase.