0.12m laptops to be given to students

Minister says laptops will help students improve their access to the latest knowledge

LAHORE: Punjab Higher Education Minister Syed Raza Ali Gillani has said the drive to distribute 115,000 laptops among university students will begin from March 13 and an additional 5,000 laptops would be given to talented and deserving students of private universities.

He was presiding over a departmental meeting at Civil Secretariat on Wednesday. The minister said the public sector universities’ students would receive laptops as per criteria of the Punjab government. “However,” he said, “the government would give 5,000 laptops to the talented and deserving students of private universities so that they could equally benefit from the scheme aimed at improving access of low-income families’ students to the digital world.”



The meeting stressed that merit and transparency should be fully ensured in distribution of laptops among the students of private universities. Gillani claimed the provision of laptops to the students of private universities was another unique step of the Punjab government.

This would help students improve their access to the latest knowledge trends. The latest top-of-the-line laptops have been procured for students, the minister remarked. Punjab Higher Education Department Secretary Naseem Nawaz and representatives of private universities and Punjab Higher Education Commission attended the meeting.

Later, Gillani hosted a visit of a Korean delegation to the Lahore Museum and briefed them about rich historical and socio-cultural dimensions of the Pakistani society. He said Pakistan has the best collections of antiquities relating to Buddhist and Sikh religions that have been well kept.



“In fact, Pakistan is the cultural capital of South Asia, as its bastion of different civilisations since the time immemorial,” Gillani said.

He said the Smiling Buddha of the Lahore Museum was revered by the Buddhist pilgrims who come from across the globe to see it.

The Korean delegation took keen interest in the artifacts belonging to the ancient Buddhist civilisation, and said a digital photographic exhibition of Lahore Museum’s collections would be held in South Korea to apprise the Buddhists of the rich history of Buddhism in South Asian region comprising of today’s Pakistan.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 9^th, 2017.