LAHORE: Pakistan Council of Scientific & Industrial Research (PCSIR) has established its Help Desk at the Lahore Chamber of Commerce & Industry. The inauguration was jointly performed by the Chairman PSCIR Dr Syed Hussain Abidi, LCCI President Mian Tariq Misbah and Senior Vice President Muhammad Nasir Hameed Khan. LCCI Executive Committee Member Haji Muhammad Asif Sehar was also present on the occasion.

Chairman PCSIR said that the Help Desk at the LCCI will work as a hotline between business community and the PCSIR. It will play a certain instrumental role for early redress of the problems being faced by the LCCI members. He hailed the LCCI for taking a lead in serving the business community and supplementing efforts of the government for economic wellbeing of the country. He said that the PCSIR is increasing the collaboration with the industry so that those technologies which are demanded by the industry can be rolled out. He said that PCSIR has put in place an online system through which the users can get the access to the results of testing reports online anywhere. This online system will also be provided at the PCSIR Help Desk at the LCCI. The Chairman said that allocation for research and development has been increased considerably in recent times. LCCI President Mian Tariq Misbah said that the business community attaches a lot of importance to PCSIR as it has important role to play in utilization of indigenous resources for the development and promotion of industrial sector leading to import substitution and export enhancement. He said that there is dearth of quality testing labs in Pakistan so our industry has to get costly certification from abroad.

He said that technology, commercialization, development of standards for quality control and accreditation through state-of-the-art testing labs are some vital areas which need to match with the requirements of modern era. “It is the need of the hour to provide required support to enhance competitiveness of local industries. When institutions like PCSIR will come forward to assist new entrepreneurs for product development as well as the established industrial units for process development etc., then Pakistan will certainly improve in the field of innovation,” he added.