ISLAMABAD- Federal Minister for Science and Technology, Dr Ata-ur-Rehman said that the government intended to develop an extensive pool of trained Information Technology (IT) manpower to meet local and export requirements.
Addressing a seminar here, the minister said that the government has decided to enhance the number of IT graduates in the country as well as maintaining the quality and affordability of the IT education.
The government has decided to give a subsidy in the shape of tax free IT products and 50 percent concession on tax on the salaries of professionals in science and information technology. The government has decided to launch four IT universities in Abbottabad, Lahore including two private universities in Karachi. He said the government is also launching R&D programmes in food and agriculture, energy, health, electronics, biotechnology, pharmaceutical, textiles, new materials, engineering, ocean research and defence.
The minister said that the government is planning to strengthen M.Phil/Ph.D programmes at 10 selected institutions with a view to produce 300 Ph.Ds annually. He said that the Human Resources Development Programmes involved engaging of expatriate scientists and technologists to work in Pakistan for 3 to 12 months, hiring of 25 senior foreign academicians and experts in S&T for 1-2 years duration to work in universities and R&D institutions; training of 100 Faculty Members in advanced countries for training at master and doctorate level; 100 post doctoral fellowships for Pakistani scientists every year in top overseas institutions.
The government also intended to strengthen the ting polytechnic colleges, develop the education research and curriculum for high standards of education, upgrade R&D infrastructure in different educational organisations.
Explaining the market segmentation he said that the present government has been concentrating on software houses, educational institutions, corporate and government organisations and manpower export.
Currently the country has 3,000 professional employees out of whom 2,000 professionals are working on local projects, 1,000 on export oriented projects. He said that the existing IT institutions in the country had the capacity to produce around 6,000 graduates annually while 68,000 IT professionals would be required to meet the software export target of $ 400 million by 2003.
Indicating the programmes launched by his ministry in IT human resources development field, he said the government bag offered scholarships and Qarz-e-Hasana for BCS, MCS and Ph.D students, re-training of public service professionals, provision of low cost PCs to schools and free Internet access to dl universities and hiring IT experts from abroad.
Education Minister Zubaida Jalal speaking on this occasion said that without education “we can not survive in this information age. She appreciated the initiative taken by the ministry in the field of information technology.
The heads of different public and private institutions attending the seminar stressed the need to increase manpower in the field of computer science locally instead of hiring foreign experts. They stressed that need that policies framed by the government for promotion of IT should be fully implemented so that people could take full advantage of the decision taken by the government.
Source: Business Recorder
Date:10/14/2000
