Education sector expenditure: NWFP governor for judicious utilisation of resources

NWFP Governor Owais Ahmed Ghani has said that huge amounts are being spent on education sector, and achievement of the desired standards of quality of knowledge is the best way to achieve the objective of its judicious utilisation. This he said while presiding over a conference of the vice-chancellors of public sector universities of the province here on Tuesday.
The Governor, who is also the Chancellor of government universities, was reviewing the prevailing procedures relating to grant of affiliation of universities to different subordinate institutions. He stressed the need to adopt policies and approaches to ensure a minimum level of quality in all educational institutions in order to address the increasing complaints regarding proper quality of education in certain institutions.
He constituted two committees comprising vice chancellors of different universities to formulate necessary proposals within a week's time for this purpose. The conference deliberated in detail on various aspects of the process of granting affiliations by universities to both public and private sector education institutions.
Talking about overall working of the public sector universities, the Governor said, "We are living in a highly competitive environment". The medical, engineering and agricultural sectors, he said, are indeed the important ones and any sort of weaknesses in their working, may cause huge loss to the nation.
He particularly mentioned the collapse of school buildings during the devastating earthquake of 2005 and said, "As a result, we have been deprived of almost a generation of children in respective areas, either because of faulty building designs or due to lack of working capacity and poor ethics of the respective officials, responsible for implementing the developmental projects."
Therefore, he said, to avoid happening of such situations in future, there is need that minimum level of quality of educational facilities in the educational institutions has to be ensured across the board in the province and equip the future graduates with the desired standard of knowledge and moral values.
Talking on another point, the Governor said, "Indeed, we must also have to give due consideration to the process of conduct of examinations, and tolerating weaknesses in this respect, is in fact, a great injustice to the future generations".
He appreciated the holding of the conference and said that these are highly stimulating and satisfying exercise and definitely would contribute a lot in having a better understanding of the problems and difficulties of the educational institutions.
Meanwhile, the conference deliberated in detail on various aspects of the process of granting affiliation by universities to different subordinate educational institutions. Besides the vice chancellors of public sector universities of the province and the Managing Director of Institute of Management Science, Dr Nasir Ali Khan, the conference was also attended by Secretary to Governor, Arbab Muhammad Arif and Secretary Higher Education Ahmad Hanif Orakzai.