FJWU direly needs hostels: new VC

Presently the hostel accommodates 70 female students and has hired 12 other buildings to accommodate over 700 students

RAWALPINDI:

The accommodation available at Fatima Jinnah Women University (FJWU) is insufficient for both students and faculty members.

This was said by the newly-appointed FJWU Vice-Chancellor (VC) Dr Samina Amin Qadir during a press conference at the campus on Wednesday.

Dr Qadir is the third VC of the university that started operation 12 years back. The new VC has been associated with the university for the last 10 years. She had previously taught at Allama Iqbal Open University and Bahauddin Zakariya University before joining FJWU.

Presently, the university is running a hostel in a civil works department building, which accommodates 70 female students and has hired 12 other buildings to accommodate over 700 students, the VC said.

To cope with the ever-increasing demand for accommodation, the VC said they had planned to build a hostel building on the university campus. Accommodation problems are also facing female teachers, as they are not given official residences or hiring facilities, Dr Qadir added.

In response to a question, the head of the FJWU said the university’s new 300-acre campus on Chakri Road is under construction and the boundary wall will be completed by the end of this year.

Responding to a point that the university is low in the Higher Education Commission’s university rankings, the VC said FJWU would have a much higher rank in the list once 28 faculty members return after completing their PhDs from abroad.

As many as 23 teachers are being supported by HEC scholarships and five others have gone on their own. The addition of more PhD teachers and an increased number of international publications will help the university go up the ladder, she added.

The VC added that the university is running as many as 16 undergraduate programmes, 13 graduate programmes and three postgraduate programmes. The university will focus more on consolidating running programmes instead of introducing new disciplines, she added.

To facilitate working women, the university has set an on-campus day care centre, where around 45 children are taken care of by a doctor and many helpers, she said.



Published in The Express Tribune, July 21^st, 2011.