SPECIAL REPORT ISLAMABAD: The future of thousands of scholarship graduates of higher education is at stake as they are facing non-release of funds by the National ICT R&D Fund mainly due to its being without any head or disinterest being shown by the authorities including Prime Minister.
The National ICT R&D Fund offers scholarships for talented students from rural/non-metropolitan areas of Pakistan with the objective to develop human resource capacity in ICT fields in Pakistan. However, after the year 2010 these scholarships were stopped to not only the under-study students but also to the fresh students mainly due to the attempts to politicize the Board of Directors of the National ICT R&D Fund.
Presently, the Fund has no CEO as has directly come under the control of Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani. Its affairs are completely disarrayed as it does not have any approved budget. Furthermore, the company has stopped funding to about 40 projects being run at the various institutions within the country and scholarship programmes have been put on hold.
“The National ICT R&D Fund has about Rs 4 billion funds which are still unspent,” an official of the Fund disclosed to this scribe on the condition of anonymity. According to him, the only problem is the disinterest regularly being shown by the authorities towards this company.
He said that funds stoppage for scholarships has not endangered the higher studies of the students but also badly affected research activities in the country.
“We are extremely unable to afford to continue our further studies after the funds stoppage by the National ICT R&D Fund,” said Ajmal Khan, a student of a national university, showing grave concern about his future.
The Fund was created in January 2007 with the vision to transform Pakistan’s economy into a knowledge-based economy by promoting efficient, sustainable, and effective IT and Telecom initiatives through synergic development of industrial and academic resources.
According to an official, a summary seeking resumption of scholarship programmes has repeatedly sent to the Prime Minister, who is currently the Chairman BoG of the ICT R&D Fund, however, due to his non-availability the summary has been sent back without any progress.
Experts opinioned, if this state of affairs lingers any more, it would ruin the future of the thousands of talented students of the country, which is absolutely unaffordable.
They suggest that the Prime Minister needs to realize the sensitivity of the issue and to either himself handle the affairs of the Fund or delegate his powers to the IT Secretary so that decisions are made to resume the research and development projects.
It is to be mentioned that numerous projects of ICT R&D Fund being executed by the Universities and R&D organizations have been stopped due to non disbursement of funds by the organization.
The same fate was of the USF who had about Rs 64 billion Fund but remained ineffective for about ten months. The telecom operators as per rule of their licenses in accordance with Telecom Policy; have to contribute 1.5 percent and 0.5 percent of their annual gross revenue to their Bodies. This situation had forced the telecom operators, who donate funds to the USF for research activities, to ask the federal government to utilize the funds properly or they will stop paying their contribution to these organizations otherwise.
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