Daily Times

The Senate’s Standing Committee on Science and Technology expressed strong displeasure on Wednesday over the absence of the relevant minister in its meetings.

The committee met under the chairmanship of Senator Mushtaq Ahmed at the Parliament House. Senators Nuzhat Sadiq, Gianchand and Syed Sabir Shah were also present.

The members observed that the committee had so far held 14 meetings in the current parliamentary year. However, the minister had attended none.

During the meeting, Prof Dr Raheel Qamar, the COMSATS University rector, submitted a compliance report over the committee’s directions issued during its previous meeting.

He told the committee that the university was ranked 10th in the SAARC region and the nine universities above COMSATS were in India. “The university aims to get at sixth position, but that requires strengthening research and development expertise by more funding and projects. There is some overlap between the jurisdiction of the parent ministry of university and the Higher Education Commission (HEC),” he said.

The committee recommended that the two universities – NUST and COMSATS – be placed under the ministry and their development projects should not have the need to be routed through HEC.

Regarding the salary structure of lecturers, the members said that their salaries should be equal to other universities. A proposal for arranging donor conferences annually also came under discussion.

The committee recommended restoring the PM’s scheme for financially supporting students from poor backgrounds. A list of defaulting students who had earlier gone on government-funded foreign scholarships but had not returned to the country was also shared with the committee. The committee recommended devising a strategy to give incentives, research directions and other measures to prevent defaulting students. The work done by COMSATS in hybrid teaching techniques also came under discussion and the prospect of taking them to school-level were discussed.

The possibility of setting up new campuses of COMSATS in Sindh, Balochistan, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was also discussed. The committee decided to call HEC officials at the next meeting to review the availability of funding.

The committee constituted a sub-committee to look into the issue of delay in award of dual-degrees to some students of COMSATS despite repeated directions of the committee.

The meeting was informed by the Pakistan Standards and Quality Control Authority (PSQCA) officials that the pending promotion cases would be completed by June 30.

Regarding pending inquiries, the committee members said that minor penalties and transfers would not serve the purpose and the committee had recommended suspensions. The secretary assured the committee that a report on the six inquiry cases would be shared within a week.

The committee nominated Pir Syed Sabir Shah to become a member of the Pakistan Halal Food Authority Board of Governors.