Government urged to allocate 4% of GDP for education

* PU VC says Pakistan spends only 2 percent of GDP on education against 7 percent in developed world

Staff Report

LAHORE: The 119th Convocation of the Punjab University (PU) was held at the Faisal Auditorium on Saturday. PU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Mujahid Kamran awarded degrees to 790 MPhil/PhD scholars, masters and undergraduates besides 203 gold and silver medals to those students who had shown extra-ordinary performance in their examinations.

Dr Kamran made an appeal to the government to allocate at least four percent of GDP for educational advancement in order to enable the country attain socio-economic dominance in the comity of nations.

The VC said that the first ever revelation to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) mentioned knowledge while 750 Quranic verses impress upon human beings to ponder over natural phenomena. He said only those countries attain the status of global economic and military power, which unravel mysteries of cosmic laws through continuous thinking.

He said our country was inhabited by over 17 crore people while Allah had blessed the Pakistani nation with unimaginable creative abilities on the basis of which it could once again play a leadership role in the world. The real problem lied with the ruling class, which had so far failed to realise the importance of education, he added.

Talking about GDP, he said that all the technologically advanced countries, including the US spend five to seven percent of their GDP on promotion of education while we were only spending two percent of our GDP for this purpose. As against the American GDP of $14 trillion, the Roshdale family alone possessed wealth amounting to $500 trillion, he added.

Dr Kamran said that against the production of 734 PhDs during the period from 1990-2007, PU had scored an enviable hat trick of over 100 PhDs every year from 2008 to 2010 by producing 105, 126 and 108 PhDs, respectively. He said research allocation had been raised by his administration from Rs 5 million in 2008 to Rs 70 million in the current fiscal year. “Our students have won 16 trophies and 81 individual prizes were grabbed during 2010,” he said.

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