One hundred and thirty six scholarships have been conferred to the needy students of public sector universities under the scheme "HEC-JICA need-based Scholarships" bringing the total number of these scholarships to 1150.
In this connection, a meeting of the Scholarship Management Committee was held at the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Secretariat on Monday and attended by focal persons of eleven participating universities.
Suleman Abdiah represented Japan International Co-operation Agency (JICA) on the occasion while Professor Dr Sohail Naqvi, Executive Director, HEC and Jalil Ahmed, Adviser, Monitoring and Evaluation, HEC represented the Commission. The focal persons presented the cases of needy students along with the media strategies to communicate the Scheme. They also gave details about their future plans and shared the successive stories with the Committee.
Dr Naqvi, who is also Chairman of the Committee, stressed the need to improve the public private partnership. He said that the institutions should involve alumnae, philanthropists of their areas, introduction of need-based scholarships by multinational corporations.
The participating universities included Institute of Management Sciences (IMS) Peshawar, University of Punjab, Lahore, NWFP Agricultural University, Peshawar, University of Peshawar, Gomal University, D.I. Khan, University of Sargodha, NED University of Engineering and Technology, Karachi, Institute of Business Administration, Sukkur, National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, FAST, Islamabad, Bahria University, Islamabad.
Donor agencies like JICA and USAID have stepped forward to support the higher education sector. Two separate programmes worth one billion rupees to support 2,500 students were initiated by the HEC. The main idea behind this initiative is to provide quality education accessible to those talented students who cannot afford the cost of higher studies in Pakistan just because of financial crises.