LAHORE: The Punjab government is going is to establish 21 new universities in the province out of which seven universities are being established in most backward districts which will help enlighten those areas with knowledge, Special Assistant to the Chief Minister Punjab Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan, said.

In a tweet on Tuesday, Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan said the PTI government is determined to establish university in every district of the Punjab.

It may be noted that the Punjab government has allocated Rs 442 billion for education in the budget 2021-22 with an increase of 13 per cent from last year. The government had proposed Rs 54.22 billion for development expenditure and Rs 388 billion for current expenses while spending on education would be 17 percent of the total Punjab budget.

With a view to addressing the problem of access to education, Insaaf School upgrade programme has been launched and during the year 25pc of primary schools (8,360) would be given the status of elementary schools and around 40 percent of these schools are situated in south Punjab. A sum of Rs 6.5 billion was earmarked for upgrade of schools to bring around 2 million students back to schools.

In a statement, Dr Firdous Awan said the one who ran away from the country for treatment is not a leader but an absconder. “Sharif family is very skilful in all sorts of jugglery and the nation also knows its expertise in forging fonts and bogus pictures to achieve political objectives,” Firdous said.

The SACM maintained that the PML-N has already faced embarrassment over tall claims of tendering resignations, now or never announcements and U-turns over long march claims; they have neither tendered resignations nor held a long march and the bondmaids’ condition is very pitiable.

It may be added that Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan had submitted her resignation to leave her office of SACM, to run party’s by-election campaign in Sialkot but withdrawn it on the direction of Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Bye-election in Sialkot and Azad Kashmir’s LA-36 election were being held in Awan’s constituency and the Election Commission had sent her notices. Therefore, she decided to resign to run the campaign in PP-38 by-poll.

Copyright Business Recorder, 2021