Daily Times

KARACHI: The MPA  on Wednesday submitted a  resolution to Sindh assembly speaker calling for establishing Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto University in Thar.

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) member of provincial assembly (MPA) Surendar Valasai has submitted a resolution on Wednesday to the speaker of Sindh assembly demanding Sindh government to established Thar University in drought-hit desert region of Sindh.
The resolution states that, “This house recommend to the Government of Sindh to take steps for the establishment of Shaheed Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto University of Thar to cater to the needs of higher education, with special emphasis on subjects, which may contribute to future requirement in local as well as national development and economic activities”.

Scattered over 22,000 square kilometers in the south eastern part of Sindh along Indian border, Thar is most backward desert region in terms of human index and infrastructure that makes headlines when frequent severe droughts start killing minor children.
Thar Desert comprises on Tharparkar district which is part of Mirpurkhas division that has three other districts including Mirpurkhas district, Umerkot and Sanghar and the division has around 5.5 million population, but there is not a single public sector university.

Public sector university in Thar is an old demand by the people of Thar. “Universities play an important role in any region and public sector university in any certain region will help locals to get higher education at their door step and higher education can help locals to enhance their skills and get economic sustainability,” Valasai told Daily Times.
He said Thar Desert has several natural resources such as the region has vast scattered coal reserves, where Sindh government has established Thar Coal power generation, but locals have no education about the different sectors required in any coal based power plants, so if in the future university has departments that can provide education on different sectors on coal based power plant, it will bring job opportunities to the locals.

“If the locals are educated, they can gets job and also economic sustainability and then they can cope with droughts and thus government doesn’t need to put more resources on relief during droughts,” said Valasai.