A sub-committee of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Thursday took up the performance report of Pakistan Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (PCSIR). The PCSIR's audit department laid ten-year (1993 to 2003) performance report of its Karachi Lab before the PAC sub-committee), which met here with Syed Naveed Qamar in the chair.
According to the report, research and development activities remained very low during the 10-year period. The expenditure incurred by PCSIR on research and development activities ranged from 0.29 percent to 5.77 percent of total expenditure with an overall average of 1.3 percent per year. In addition, the PCSIR spent Rs 8 million out of Rs 589 million on research and development.
The audit report further observed that a mere one third of the total research and development output of the scientists could attain recognition at an international level out of the total 486 research papers published in scientific magazines and journals during the period. "Publication of the research results in reputable journals also constitutes the output of any organisation engaged in scientific research," it said.
The audit report indicates that in terms of publications of quality work, the total output comes to 2.67 papers per scientist over a period of 10 years which implied that it took a scientist, on the average, four years to complete a research paper. PCSIR laboratories are performing the primary objective of undertaking research activities at a very meagre scale in spite of having qualified staff and adequate research facilities. The proportion of amount spent on research and development has been very insignificant over the last 10 years.
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