Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani on Friday granted COMSATS Institute of Information Technology (CCIT) status of a university. He pledged to enhance education budget, saying allocation of resources for education is necessary to develop human resources to achieve economic growth.
Addressing after the inauguration of CIIT Islamabad campus here on Friday, the prime minister said that development and promotion of education has been a key area of the present government and reaching out to the students was his passion. Gilani said that he directed the Ministry of Information and Technology to ensure early completion of Information Technology Park Project at Islamabad, which would also be launched later on in all the provinces.
The prime minister said that Pakistan's current population stands at 170 million and a major chunk of the population was in the age group of 17 to 25, which needed to be capitalised through investment in human resource development. He regretted that despite showing an increasing trend, the literacy rate in the country is still far from satisfactory, with wide gender disparities and abdication of this responsibility can be fatal. He said that Millennium Development Goals targets could only be met by enhancing literacy rate with special focus on the literacy of women.
The prime minister said that after the passage of the 18th Constitutional Amendment, the education has now become provincial subject and the federal government would continue providing them all the possible help for capacity building to deliver in education sector. The federation, he said has to take ownership of higher technical and scientific education as well. Gilani urged the provinces to focus on capacity building of their respective educational departments. He said that the government's priorities are to promote basic research, with focus on capacity building. The government is making efforts to increase the higher education enrolment, from existing 3.7% to 10% by 2015, and 15%, by 2020.
These steps would enable the government to bring world class education at the doorsteps of Pakistani youth at an affordable cost. He said that the government views education as an instrument to combat extremist tendencies through enhancement of awareness. Earlier, rector of the COMSATS Dr Junaid Zaidi said that 53 programmes are being offered in seven institutions under CIIT in various parts of the country and the institution has been self- generating 77 resources and was receiving 23 per cent support in terms of resources from the government. Zaidi said that of the 20,000 enrolled students, 3000 are being provided education free of cost. Mir Changez Khan Jamali, Chancellor of the COMSATS Institute for Information Technology also spoke on the occasion.