The NWFP Governor, Owais Ahmed Ghani has said, quality in education, technological advancement and the knowledge, being imparted in educational institutions is must not only for socio-economic uplift of the people of the country but even for our survival as a nation amongst the comity of nations.
He was talking to a group of researchers and scholars of various public and private educational institutions who have been adjudged as the best ones through a two rounds process of competitions conducted by the provincial Department of Science and Technology and Information Technology, which called on him at Governor House, Peshawar.
The Chairman of Academia-Industry-Government-Roundtable (AIGR), Engineer Zahid Arif and the provincial Director, Science and Technology Khalid Khan were also present on this occasion.
During the last century, the Governor said, mass scale manpower use to be applied for vast level production of everything, which is now gradually being replaced by automatic robust and computer technology, and decreasing the trend of depending on manpower in almost every field of life. Therefore, he added, if we have to survive with honour, our focus must be on research and technological development the Governor said, fortunately our scientists have the capability to seek solutions of confronting problems and challenges through technological advancement.
Keeping in view the given environment in the educational institutions, the Governor said, there exists every hope that our technologists would never disappoint the nation; maintain their level of achievements and come up to the expectations in future as well.
Appreciating the imaginative capabilities and creative qualities of the young students and budding scholars, the Governor advised them to focus on new innovations and generate new technologies. "You have the potential to meet the given challenges successfully and the government will continue its efforts of sponsoring your research programmes and promoting new technologies", he said.
Earlier, the Governor also inspected the research models, displayed by the researchers and highly appreciated their imaginative capabilities. Meanwhile, Eng. Zahid Arif and Khalid Khan highlighted the various phases of the research competitions for selecting best researchers as well as the achievements of the department.
"This was a well organised effort to encourage students and scholars, engaged in research studies and enable them to demonstrate their abilities and in future we are further diversifying our efforts in this respect", they said. They also thanked the Governor for his keen interest in the activities of the department as well as AIGR.