Daily Times

The National Assembly Standing Committee on States and Frontier Regions (SAFRON) Thursday recommended that the Higher Education Commission (HEC) must issue a notification for doubling seats in medical colleges for eight years so that the issue pending for the last three years might be resolved once and for all.

The committee expressed concern over non-compliance of the recommendation passed by the committee in its meeting held on January 7, 2021 regarding issuance of notification for doubling seats for students from erstwhile Fata in medical and dental colleges.

The representative of Khyber Medical University (KMU) informed the committee that “we have no powers to enhance the seats however we can send recommendations to Higher Education Commission (HEC)”.

The representative of HEC apprised the committee that 36 additional seats for erstwhile FATA already had been increased and the issue was resolved. He further informed that HEC was only a regulator and we took up the recommendations of provinces. The committee under the chair of Sajid Khan expressed its displeasure on not attending the meeting by the chairman Wapda and directed that he must attend the next meeting in person and to brief the committee on the agenda otherwise the committee would move a privilege motion against him.

The meeting was attended by Saleh Muhammad, Shahid Ahmad, Gul Dad Khan, Gul Zafar Khan, Abdul Shakoor Shad, Shaheen Naz Saifullah, Muhammad Afzal Khokhar, Syeda Nosheen Iftikhar, Aysha Rajab Ali, Sajid Hussain Turi and Muhammad Jamal-ud-Din, MNAs and officers/officials of the Ministry of SAFRON and its attached Departments.