Education needs: Universities to start fundraising for displaced persons

HEC mobilising support.

ISLAMABAD:

The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has started mobilising universities to support displaced persons from North Waziristan Agency (NWA).

A meeting of the vice-chancellors of public and private sector universities in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) was held at the HEC Regional Centre in Peshawar on Wednesday. The meeting was chaired by HEC Chairman Dr Mukhtar Ahmed.

KP Minister for Higher Education Mushtaq Ahmad Ghani and KP Higher Education Department Secretary Farah Hamid Khan also attended the meeting.

The HEC chairman informed the meeting that an account had been opened for the collection of donations from universities from across the country.

He said that as an initial deposit, the HEC was contributing one-day’s salary of all its employees.

The forum recommended constitution of two committees, a need-analysis and a task force committee.

The need-analysis committee will be headed by Khushal Khan Khattak University, Karak Vice-Chancellor Muhammad Ibrahim Khattak and the task force committee will be headed by University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar Vice-Chancellor Imtiaz Gillani

The need-analysis committee will submit its recommendation to the task force committee, which will work out the financial impact and recommend release of funds out of the account maintained at HEC, Islamabad. The task force committee will submit audited statement of accounts of expenditure.

Ahmad suggested that the committees should focus on three core issues of education, health, and administrative support. Ghani appreciated the HEC initiative to mobilise the universities to raise funds to lessen the miseries of the displaced persons.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 10^th, 2014.