Daily Times

By Bhagchand Meghwar
ICT Competition Winner Team 1

My name is Bhagchand Meghwar, I hail from the village of Kasbo, located in Tharparkar, Sindh. From an outsider’s perspective, Thar is a barren, arid land, with harsh weather and zero facilities. It lacks fundamental infrastructure and any modern concepts of development. Most people living in this area find themselves below the line of poverty. The reason I introduced my home in this manner is because one can never surmise what the future holds for all of us and how life can change so drastically.

I vividly remember that it was the year 2015 when I got my admission in the telecom department of Mehran University of Engineering and Technology. This would not have been possible without the encouragement and high efforts of my parents that I managed to join and started my initial learning in this modern field. In beginning it was all very foreign to me, as I had no background in IT education. During my time at university there were moments when I thought I wasn’t cut out for it, that I would not be able to make a future career out of this. As a student in their initial stages of learning, I wanted to aspire big. Despite my moments of doubt, I was always able to find the motivation to go forwards within myself and knew that if the right opportunity presented itself, that I would give it my all. After a grueling four years, in my final year of university, the right opportunity came along in the image of the Huawei ICT Competition 2021-2022. I decided to tackle this opportunity head on worked hard day and night to manifest my dreams. Despite that, I was unable to qualify for the finals in my first two attempts. Undeterred by that, I was still confident that if I tried harder and pushed myself to my limits by gathering more skills and honing existing ones, I would be able to succeed at my third attempt, and succeed I did. The Huawei ICT Competition 2021-2022 Global Final in Shenzhen drew to a close on June 25. It included three competitions – Practice, Innovation and Industry – attracted 150,000 students from more than 2000 universities in 85 countries and regions around the world. After making it through the national and regional competitions, 130 teams from 43 countries and regions faced off in the global final, making this year’s finals the largest yet. With the help of my teammates; Sateesh Kumar and Iqra Fatima and our mentor, Dr. Faheem Khuhawar, our team, Pakistan Team 1 clinched the 1st prize in the Network Category of the practice competition, winning a prize of USD 20,000.

The international exposure was a wonderful medium for enthusiastic learners, I learned and enjoyed every moment of my journey from bitter to sweet days. In the end we all live in moments and I cherished every moment to the fullest and came out of it having learned some new technologies like Cloud Computing, AI, storage etc. This platform gave us a wide range of opportunities through which we can revolutionize our world. I’m really proud and thankful to my fellow team members, and to Huawei, for providing us this amazing platform to showcase our talent. I’m extremely optimistic about the future, we have many brilliant youngsters with untapped talent, waiting to be discovered by the right opportunity. These gems will serve to be a national asset for Pakistan, and will be the vital towards realizing the vision of Digital Pakistan.