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Tuesday, 6 August 2013

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United Nations chief to land in Pakistan after Eid

UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. PHOTO: FILE

ISLAMABAD: UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon will arrive in Pakistan on August 13, the Foreign Office confirmed on Sunday.

Upon arrival, the UN chief will call on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and President Asif Ali Zardari, FO officials said.
“The UN secretary general and his wife, who will accompany him on his two-day trip, will also meet the families of the polio workers slain in attacks,” an official told The Express Tribune. Sources in the foreign ministry said Ban will also inaugurate the Peace Restoration Centre and deliver a lecture about the project at the National Defence University during his trip.

Initially, FO officials said that the UN secretary general was scheduled to arrive on August 14. Later, however, they maintained Ban Ki-moon’s schedule had been revised and he was likely to arrive earlier, either on August 12 or 13.
However, the official spokesperson for the entire UN mission in Pakistan, Ishrat Rizvi, said that she is not in a position to confirm the dates of secretary general’s arrival in Pakistan. She added that due to classified reasons, a final advisory for the media would be issued on August 12 “when everything will be in a final shape.”
According to Rizvi, Ban will be accompanied by a 21-member delegation, apart from his wife.
Talking to The Express Tribune, a Unicef official said the extensive damage wrought across the country by monsoons this time around prompted a revision in Ban’s scheduled meetings and engagements.
“The secretary general is expected to hold a brief interaction with the media on his arrival, saying he is coming to accentuate the cohesion of the UN and the international community with the people of Pakistan, who are enduring a tough era due to the disastrous and unprecedented floods and worsening security state in the country,” the official said.
UN officials in Islamabad coordinating the UN chief’s visit confirmed that his discussions with Prime Minister Nawaz will include the recent floods and the coordinated response to the disaster.
This will be Ban’s second trip to the country. He earlier visited Pakistan during the 2010 floods. During the visit the UN secretary general announced an additional $10 million in aid for flood relief efforts apart from the $17 million he had pledged earlier.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 5^th, 2013

Monday, 5 August 2013

Improving standards: Higher education panel to assess Balochistan’s needs

ISLAMABAD: A task force, chaired by the Higher Education Commission’s chairperson, is expected to reach Balochistan by the end of this month to assess the violence-hit province’s higher educational needs and to enhance the current infrastructure of its education institutions.

The idea to form a special body for the Balochistan was presented by the Chief Minister Balochistan Dr Abdul Malik Baloch on July 25 during his visit to the HEC.
Though the number of universities in the province has increased from two to eight and student enrollment has gone up to 76,000 from 30,000 in 2011 there is a need for improvement to meet the demands in the disciplines of science and technology.
HEC

Following the meeting, Chairman HEC Javaid Laghari agreed to constitute a special task force which would work to evaluate and promote higher education in the province.
“The purpose is to make Balochistan able so that it can keep pace with national standards and cooperate in addressing human resource related problems in the province,” said Laghari.
According to an official at the HEC, the task force will assess the need to build new universities in far-flung areas like Gwadar and other violence-hit areas. Besides, it is also tasked to look for creating new disciplines in the already running institutions.
The force is expected to hold meetings with vice chancellors of various universities. They will also meet other stakeholders including students, civil society and academics to gauge the need and develop and upgrade the current infrastructure where needed.
The recommendations, which will be made in a month after the visit, will be presented to the chief minister. The HEC will then assist in the planning which comes under its authority, while the rest of the recommendations will be sent to the prime minister.

According to a press release issued by the HEC, while assessing the universities in Balochistan, the body among other things, will specifically focus on areas including governance and management of universities. Autonomy from all kinds of extraneous influences in academic, administrative and financial functions, faculty development, trainings and research functions, institutional performance, adequacy of resources (public and self-generated; including university effectiveness to mobilise resources), efficiency and effectiveness of resource use, adoption and adherence to quality standards and practices, development and quality of faculty, retention vis-à-vis vacancy. The recommendations will also focus on the problems created by the law and order.
The main HEC initiatives for promotion of equitable access to higher education in Balochistan include: approval of 49 development projects amounting to more than Rs10 billion, application of federal quota policy over indigenous and foreign scholarship programs. The HEC is to allocate 390 PhD scholarships for the university faculty, award 2,000 scholarships to students of Balochistan and Fata, 1,500 more scholarships and 600 foreign PhD scholarships, implementing Fee Waiver Scheme for the Public Sector University Students of Balochistan at Master’s and MS level. Besides this recently an HEC Regional Centre was also established in Quetta.
Published in The Express Tribune, August 5^th, 2013.