Moalims

LAHORE: Former Higher Education Commission chairman and Dignosco Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Ataur Rahman has said that due to negligence of counseling sector in educational institutions, every year around 10,000-15,000 scholarships wasted in countries like Germany as no one is able to achieve these scholarships.

He was talking to media personnel on Tuesday at Dignosco office. He said that there is a dire need to counsel students in education sector in Pakistan, as there is not a single full time counsellor in educational institutions across the country.

He was of the view that due to improper counselling provided by educational institutions, the number of Paksitanis' visiting western countries has dropped as compared to neighbouring countries. All leading private educational schools, colleges and universities do not provide proper counselling to their students, as they believe that they doing enough in this regard, but actually they are doing nothing, he emphasised.

For this purpose, keeping in view the need of the students and people, Dignosco took an initiative to provide people the proper counselling to get admissions in foreign universities, he added. He went on saying that Dignosco provides counselling to the student who cannot afford expensive education inside Pakistan as well as foreign universities.

He claimed, "Through our counselling, students have managed to pay tuition fee of foreign universities lower than Pakistan's elite universities. If a student studies in a university of United States, he has to bear million of rupees, but through our counselling, our students are paying only Rs 3000,000 to one million."

Dr Attaur Rehman said, "We select students only on the basis of their educational qualifications and achievements rather than their statuses." He said that they have sent abroad on free charges students belonging to Balochistan, as they were unable to afford high fee of foreign universities.

The former HEC chairman said that his organization's aim was not earning profit but to guide the youth of Pakistan in a right way through which they can save their money as much as they can.

Dr Atta had been one of the close aides of former president Pervez Musharraf and remained in his good books till the end. He was made federal minister for science and technology in the first cabinet of Generan (r) Musharraf after the military coup of 1999. In 2002, when the government decided to change the University Grants Commission (UGC) into the HEC, Dr Atta opted to become its chairman.

He had been conferred on different awards in recognition of his eminent contributions in the field of Organic Chemistry.

Dr Attaur Rehman resigned from Higher Education Commission in 2008. Durign his tenure, over 400 development projects were started in the public sector universities and the higher education budget had gone up from Rs 800 million in 2002 to Rs 18 billion in 2007.

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