Edu minister ‘clarifies’ his reservations about the campus location

Says that Latifabad, as suggested by other parties, is too far-flung for students of all areas.

HYDERABAD: After evoking a heated reaction from the Muttahida Qaumi Movement and other parties on his comments against establishing a university in Hyderabad, Sindh Education Minister Pir Mazharul Haq brought up the issue yet again on Wednesday. “The cause of the disagreement is not setting up a university in Hyderabad, but where its location should be,” the minister explained, while talking to the media at a ceremony in a government school.

Mazhar sparked a controversy when he reportedly stated on February 23 that he was against the establishment of a university in Hyderabad. “The opposing parties wanted to establish their own university in a specific area of Hyderabad city but I became an iron wall against them,” said Haq. “Then they started using other tricks, such as using their former military intelligence people in the governor house, and ultimately they succeeded.”

The minister went on to elaborate his objection which was directly linked to the MQM’s demand that the university should be built in Latifabad’s Kohsar area. “Who will go to this remote place? Hyderabad is a big city. A university should be built at a location which is easily accessible to all students.”

He has proposed the Tando Jam road, Bypass road and Tando Muhammad Khan road as alternate locations for the university, as “thousands of acres are available in these areas.”

“If, however, they want a ‘separate’ university for Latifabad, we will build one for them.”



Following the initial comments by Haq in February, a strike was called by the MQM, Jamiat-i-Islami and business community representatives, during which two people sustained bullet injuries and a police officer lost an eye.

The district’s population is estimated to be over two million while there is only one public sector university, Sindh Agriculture University. The city’s students mostly study at the three government universities in Jamshoro and their affiliated colleges in Hyderabad, other than the private sector university in the area.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 15^th, 2013.