President approves Urdu varsity's sub-campuses for Chitral: MNA
ISLAMABAD, Oct 27: MNA Chitral, Shahzada Iftikharuddin, on Monday stated that President Mamnoon Hussain has approved the establishment of sub-campuses of the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology, Islamabad, in the Chitral town, Drosh and Booni.
In a statement, the MNA said the president had approved the project on his request for the immediate start of the FUU’s sub-campuses in three towns of Chitral.
It must be noted that in a meeting with Vice Chancellor Federal Urdu University in January 2014, the MNA’s request was received positively for the inclusion of degrees in Hotel & Tourism/Hospitality Management, Mining Engineering and other disciplines such as electrical and mechanical.
In yet another major development, the MNA said several sites, including Kaghlasht, Mori Lasht, Lawi (Drosh), Ayun and Chitral were being considered for the opening of a cadet college for Chitral. The establishment of the cadet college has also been approved on gthe MNA’s request. The MNA had made the request to Governor KPK, Prime Minister and Corps Commander Peshawar.
The Chitral Scouts commandant has been tasked with searching and providing a suggest list of sites. This is expected to be a major breakthrough to ensure quality education needs of Chitral’s youth that is faced with a stiff competition from students from other districts.
These two initiatives are expected to bring about a major transformation in the lives of the Chitral nation in their pursuit of higher education and better quality life and sound professional careers.]]>
I, with the permission of the editor, would like to share our respected MNA’s detailed response and clarification about the procedural aspect of the matter in discussion. Apart from the university matter he has many other things in his mind to do for Chitral. We must respect his vision and commitment. May he successfully come up to our expectations! Here goes his response:
“Zahoor I am aware of Chitral’s ranking which by a razor thin margin falls behind Haripur and had spoken to Musharraf Zaidi whose Alif Alaan initiative (funded by DfiD) that has come up with these rankings. I agree that Chitral deserves a university and that Chitral with more than 100 colleges should have had a full fledged University in contrast to Dir Upper (that has just a few — maybe 3 or 5). Realpolitic by the previous PPP Government to reward the people of Dir was behind the choice of Dir (whose provincial assembly seats were overwhelmingly won by the PPP in the 2008 elections). For me quality education is certaily a top priority but you are well aware that after 18th Amendment education is a primarliy the domain of provincial government. The then KPK Government in 2008 wanted to reward the people of Dir inspite of the fact that 98% of the colleges affliated with Sheringal University originate in Chitral. The current KPK Government has plans of merging the BB University and KAWK University to form the University of Chitral as that would be a Provincially chartered University. On the other hand AIOU with a different modus opperandi is already operating in Chitral since many years and the idea of Fed Urdu University (that;s a Federally Chartered University) was to add a different dimension to the competition as it has shown a willingness to offer degrees i.e. Hotel, Restaurant and Hospitality Management besides Engineering and other disciplines ____fields that offer enourmous future career prospects in those sectors thad hold out significant potential such as tourism and hydro power for which Chitral has nearly 15,000 MW potential. I am also pursuing the Poly Technic and Vocational Training Institues for Chitral with the new TEVTA Chief Nauman Wazir as the KPK Government had put a moratorium on brick and mortar schemes in the name of focussing on quality rather than quantity as a result of which the Poly Technic for which the CM on 23rd December following a demand from me had issued directives was shelved altogether.That policy of the KPK Government (Re: Polytechnics) makes more sense for Peshawar and other adjoining districts that have plenty of those but not in Chitral that has no polytechnics. I would soon be visiting Peshawar to meet Nauman Wazir who had promised to give back Chitral’s rightful share. Nobody disputes that we need quality education as I had given the lack of qualiy education as the main reason in my demand for a Cadet College at Chitral via a letter written to the Governor KPK and copied to Prime Minister and Corps Commander Peshawar (since majority of applicatns appearing in the Navy Test could not pass the test (thereby depriving many aspirants. That demand has been put forth to many heads of states in the past and General Musharraf had even approved one at Shandur (but nothing materialized). And by the way the Commandant Chitral Scouts has already sent the recommended list of potential sites for Cadet College. Chitral can only march ahead and get its much desired place amongst the competition if better institutes were available locally. No one is disputing your capability of being able to establish a University at Chitral and your suggestions are welcome. But as you have yourself admitted that there are vultures out there. We have a long struggle ahead of us and are ready to put up a fight for Chitral’s cause. We all realize that quality and not quantity is the way forward but on the other hand currently more than 90% of University going students of Chitral are pursuing costlier education outside Chitral.”
Dreams on Sell… Only three campuses…. they are not enough you should establish more to suck out the remaining blood in our education sector. For God sake Mr Educated MNA keep ground realities in mind… you have already two campuses,,, oh sorry they are not yours they are of PPP and ANP.. so why should you care.. let them pay the debt of nature or even orchestrate some strategy to make them totally dysfunctional so that in the next election you will win saying PPP and ANP could not continue their universities and mine one are functional. The best idea and it is free having no copyrights enjoy it as this is the time of Machiavellian politics… let the idiot Chitrali and their dirty youth die.. why you care… after all your children/sibling can go any where and they don’t need any university in chitral.
make sure Mr MNA education is our right not privilege and we never allow running your shops while selling our dreams… don’t forget you have to come to the masses after five years… we still see in you an active person. but please no jock with education… politicians have almost marred every aspect of chitral, giving boast to sectarianism to racialism, looting human to natural resources, playing with emotions to practices but no more please and especially no compromise on education.
lastly Mr MNA you know very well that wrong political decisions are like tuberculosis easy to cure yet difficult to diagnose in the beginning and difficult to cure and easy to diagnose at the later stage. i hope you will have a pradaigm shift in your polices as you were and still are the only hope
Dear Editor!
I respectfully request you to please dig out manifesto of our MNA during the GE 2013. What he promised for Chitral during that election and please analyze his performance of 1.5 years as MNA against that Manifesto.
The MNA is good for nothing and has assumed only one role i.e. claiming credit for projects earlier planned by independent institutions. At government level he has not achieved anything for Chitral.
I fully agree with Zahoor Ul Haq Danish that the MNA has disappointed us. We understand that his political position in the National Assembly is weak and it is not easy to be a lone law maker from Musharaf party. But we do not expect the MNA to come out with a press release and claim that he is behind it. All these interventions by Federal Urdu University and mobile companies were planned well before your knowledge. We know the MNA is under pressure but he should be honest with us. The lesson learnt for Chitralis from all this is that we should never send a lone member to the parliament and look for the impact of our vote on the national level.
Zahoor sab, we are totally agree with you that is the quandary need to understand by our political leadership. There are 65 colleges in Chitral but the Banazir University has been established in upper Dir while only 5 colleges existed in Dir district.
Got disturbingly disheartened! MNA sab when will you demand a full fledged university??? After Chitral is ‘devoured’ by ‘vultures’???? Come on gentleman!!!!!!! Enough with campuses now, they are nothing but franchises to loot Chitral and Chitralis. Come on! Demand a full fledged university. (It is almost a year since I have sent you a document to support our claim for an independent university. I am pretty sure you must have put it into a dustbin). Chitral over-fulfills all grounds necessary to claim a university! What we have been badly lacking is political leadership. We had associated high expectations with you. Now that you also keep demanding ‘campuses’ (dukaans), we have due reasons to stagger. How many campuses do you need in Chitral by the way?? Even I can get them established here. That needs no MNA to request the President. Sorry I am ‘cruel only to be kind’. You underestimate yourself as well as the people of Chitral. Come up! Trust yourself and your people. You can be a great leader and carve a very respectable name in history. Education should be at least among your top-three priorities. Demand a university and win it, so that the indigenous talent (and money of course) remains in Chitral, and is used for its development. Kab tak Chitral sey ‘brain drain’ or ‘resources drain’ hote rahen??? We can no longer afford it MNA sab. We have voted for you only for two reasons: first you used ‘Musharraf trump card’; and secondly you were the most educated of all political leaders of Chitral, so far. KINDLY DO NOT MISREPRESENT US PLEASE, especially when seeking our educational RIGHTS (NOT privileges). All the educated and youth folk are with you! Stand for our educational right on every forum. One thing is clear: WE DO NOT NEED CAMPUSES (Taalimi dukaans). Thanks.
Respected MNA.
The establishment of Federal University of Arts, Science and Technology as well as Cadet College will be the immense achievement for the community of Chitral.Congratulation to all for this marvelous job. We salute your vision for the step taken to make a true nation. This is really a major development in the history of Chitral. We have a lot of expectation from you and we hope you will come up to meet our expectation. Here I would like also to extend my appreciation for the approval of revised estimate and to federalize (through NHA) the Torkhow road for further implementation. We are looking forward to implement this process as soon as possible.