ISLAMABAD: Finance Minister Miftah Ismail said on Saturday that the incumbent government’s relief package ‘Sasta Petrol Sasta Diesel’, as announced by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, would protect poor families from the “storm of inflation” left by the previous government and the recent hike in fuel prices.
During a press conference, the finance minister outlined that the PML-N government’s relief package targets households led by women with a monthly income of less than Rs40,000.
According to Miftah, these women Sohail underlined the challenges of the higher education sector, especially in the face of the proposed budgetary cut. She regretted that the recurring grant allocated to HEC since FY 2017-18 has almost been stagnant and its share as a percentage of GDP kept on declining to the level of 0.14% in the current fiscal year.
She highlighted that the higher education sector has witnessed tremendous growth during the last five years through the establishment of the number of new universities/HEIs by the federal/provincial governments, while the students’ enrolment has also remarkably increased.
In his speech, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Azad Jammu and Kashmir, Prof. Dr. Muhammad Kaleem Abbasi said that the public sector universities of AJK have been facing a continuous financial crisis since the 18th amendment. As a result of this amendment, all the provincial governments provide grants to the universities established in their respective provinces whereas the universities in AJK get very meager grants from the government.
All the universities of Azad Kashmir depend on the Higher Education Commission for their financial resources and if the budget of the Higher Education Commission is reduced, it will have adverse negative impacts on the universities of Azad Kashmir.
He demanded the President of Azad Kashmir and Chancellor of the universities, Barrister Sultan Mehmood Chaudhry, and Prime Minister Sardar Tanveer Ilyas to take up the issue with the Federal Government at the highest level to save the universities in Azad Kashmir from any possible financial crisis.
