Daily Times

LAHORE: The faulty web portal of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Laptop Scheme registration has put thousands of students across the country in a dilemma as they are unable to register themselves even after multiple attempts, Daily Times learnt on Thursday.

While registering on the portal, students have to enter all their academic information in the given fields, however, they were facing severe problems during entering their CGPA, percentage of marks obtained and semester. The portal usually collapses during the process or gives error in this process. On the other hand, several students registering themselves by using smartphones also faced JavaScript error when they entered their CNIC numbers.

It is worthy to note here that the federal government of the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) announced to award 100,000 laptops to shining students of universities when it came to government in 2013. Since then, every year, the PML-N government allocates a specific amount in the annual budget for this scheme. Therefore, the HEC was given the task for distribution of laptops, which made a web portal where students can register themselves and enter all their academic information. After getting the information from students, the HEC then awards laptops to the students who were on merit.

However, in the previous budget 2017-18, the PML-N government allocated Rs 20 billion for Prime Minister Laptop Scheme Phase IV under which the registration started from July 10 at the HEC’s web portal.

The students who faced the errors while registration themselves criticised the HEC for its negligence and not fixing the fault even after 10 days and demanded the commission to extend the last date for registration process after fixing the fault.

Talking to Daily Times, a student of BS (hons) Raina Shah explained that she was using her smartphone to register for HEC’s Laptop Scheme. She told that when she logged in to the website she entered her all information but when she clicked the submit button a pop-up error was shown. “I checked all my data including name, roll number, registration number, semester and university name – nothing was wrong. But still the error was showing,” she said. Raina added that when she emailed a complaint to the given HEC email ID, she didn’t get any response.

Another student doing MSc in Punjab University Wasif Ali informed that he got a different problem as when he was entering his intermediate results he got an error that he cannot proceed if his marks are below 70 percent. “The HEC has the criteria that you must have marks greater than 70 percent in previous varsity exam, not intermediate,” he said, adding that he was shocked after reading that error. “I refreshed the page and repeated entering my data but the error was the same.”

Wasif said that it was negligence on part of the HEC officials who didn’t even fix the error after 10 days. He added that many of his classmates and friends residing in other cities were also facing similar problems.

Another student Rubab said that this HEC’s negligence had put her and many other students in dilemma. She said that she knew many students who wrote complaint emails to HEC to fix the problem but the problem has not been fixed yet. HEC officials and authorities concerned must extend the last date for registration at web portal, she said.

HEC spokesperson Ayesha said that the students who may be entering the wrong or less than 13 figures of CNIC may face the problem, as it was a requirement of “our system”. On question about problem being faced during entering intermediate percentage and marks, she was of the view that there could be a typography error by students; otherwise this error didn’t make sense. She also said that students carrying CGPA less than 2.88 were not eligible so they could not continue the process.

Published in Daily Times, July 21^st, 2017.