Islamabad : The government has decided to build a state-of-the-art engineering university in line with the wishes of the late Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan who was quite ambitious about this project.
According to the details, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan sent a handwritten letter to Ahsan Iqbal during the previous PMLN government and urged him to establish a new engineering university in Pakistan.
Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan also attached a feasibility report of the university with his letter that has now been forwarded to the Higher Education Commission (HEC) chairman and construction work on this university would be initiated in July.
An official said the Minister for Planning and Development personally approached the HEC chairman and showed him the letter and feasibility report of the university sent by Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, adding “HEC is likely to initiate construction work on the engineering university in July.”
He said, “The university will be built on the name of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan with an aim to pay tributes to this great scientist who helped Pakistan become one of the nuclear states in the world.”
The official also informed that they have set a criterion to evaluate the universities according to their potential and performance and the top performing universities would be given funds to improve their core competence to bring them at par with international standards.
Minister for Planning and Development Ahsan Iqbal has said they would build the engineering university because Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan personally contacted him for this purpose during their previous government.
“Now the HEC will translate this dream of Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan into reality. We will also upgrade the labs of existing engineering universities in line with the international practices,” he said.
He pointed out that the universities need to be funded for the commencement of quality research that should later be audited to get to know whether it has been conducted keeping in view the demands of the industrial sector.
