LAHORE: Federal Minister of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives Engr Prof Ahsan Iqbal on Tuesday said that the security and development of nations depends on knowledge and technology, for which the teachers and students of universities should help in solving Pakistan’s national problems through laboratories.
He was addressing the inaugural ceremony of the new building of Punjab University Institute of Energy and Environmental Engineering.
In his address, Prof Ahsan Iqbal said that universities are centres of research and innovation that find solutions to problems.
He said that due to the policies of the previous government, Pakistan has suffered an economic heart attack and if the situation is not changed in the future, the situation may become more dangerous.
He said that hate was spread through social media to divide the nation and the use of such language became common that even PhD scholars could not avoid it.
“The bullet in my body is a reminder of the hatred and extremism that a party has spread,” he said.
Ahsan Iqabal said that like a computer, the virus of hatred also goes into the brain and becomes a pest for the society. In the last few years, every section, including the youth, was incited for the politics of hatred.
Pakistan needs development projects which were reduced a lot in the previous government; we are starting development projects again for the development of Pakistan.
He said that he went to Pasheen, Pasni and other such areas to inaugurate university campuses and development projects. In the previous regime, we had included energy, elimination of terrorism and economic reforms in our top priorities, this time five E’s i.e. exports, e-Pakistan, equity, environmental and food security and energy will be our priority.
He said that the digital revolution had come to the world, in the next ten years, many jobs will not be needed and they will be replaced by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and new opportunities.
He also said that educational institutions should play their dynamic role in the creation of new knowledge and promote research according to the needs of the industry. Teachers should update themselves and teach modern knowledge to the youth through faculty development programme.
He said that when the government came to power in 2013, there was an energy crisis in the country, there was terrorism and the economic situation was also worse than ever.
Our government not only eradicated terrorism from the country, but added 11,000 megawatts to the power system to overcome the energy crisis and reduced load shedding to zero along with eliminating terrorism and especially, the life of Karachi, the city of lights, was restored.
He said that our government introduced such an economic policy after which the world declared it a safe country for investment and the ambassadors of developed countries used to ask me for the investment of the companies of their countries.
On this occasion, Chairman Punjab Higher Education Commission Prof Dr Shahid Munir, PU VC Prof Dr Khalid Mahmood, Mir Chakar Khan Rind University of Technology DG Khan VC Dr Mahmood Saleem, Director IEEE Dr Hamid Sattar, faculty members and a large number of students were present.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2023
Comments
Comments are closed.