Education monitoring assistants get bikes, raise

LAHORE

Provincial Minister for School Education Rana Mashhood Ahmad Khan has said that Monitoring and Evaluation Assistants (MEAs) are the linchpin of the department, therefore, the government has provided motorbikes and latest tablets to them.

He stated this while addressing a ceremony held at Directorate of Staff Development to distribute motorbikes and tablets among the MEAs on Saturday, according to a handout issued here.

The minister announced an increase of 40 percent in the salary of MEAs. After this increase, their monthly salary would be Rs 26,000. The minister also announced an annual increase of Rs 1,000 and asked them to work hard to help providing quality education to the students. He said that the effective role of Chief Minister’s Monitoring Force had been copied by different departments, adding that other provinces too had introduced this model.

While appreciating the effective role of MEAs in achieving overall targets, he said that increase in their salaries and provision of other facilities them was a reward for their hard work and abilities. He said that a total of 1,068 MEAs in 36 districts of the province would benefit from this package. He also said that the MEA staff was performing multiple roles, including evaluating performance and collecting different sorts of data, which helped the department in assessment and future planning.

learning management: Taking a landmark initiative in the history of Punjab University, PU Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Zafar Mueen Nasir has announced introducing the Learning Management System in all the teaching departments of the university. 

In this regard, the VC held a meeting with IT Director Imran Qureshi and other IT experts at the committee room of his office. Issuing directions to the officials, Dr Zafar Mueen said that a digital system must be introduced to replace the existing obsolete learning system.

He said that the proposed solution would be based on Moodle which was a renowned open-source Learning Management System being widely used across the globe. He said that the system would enable the students to interact online with the teachers during the whole academic programme. 

He said that teachers would be able to schedule classes, mark attendance, assign quizzes, post assignments and presentations and manage examinations. He said that in this way, teachers and students would be able to contact with each other on 24/7 basis. He said that transparent assessment and course learning outcome systems would be introduced.

He said that faculty and student portals would also be developed. He said that this system would initially be experimented at one department and, after its success, it would be implemented in the rest of the departments. He said that the system would result in delivery of quality education which was the main objective of the incumbent administration.

Stent: Specialised Healthcare and Medical Education Punjab Secretary Najam Ahmed Shah has constituted a committee comprising senior cardiologists to resolve the issue of unregistered stents and other products which are used in the procedures of cardiac patients.

According to a handout issued here on Saturday, the committee would present its recommendations to register the pharmaceutical companies/firms with the Drug Regularity Authority of Pakistan (DRAP). 

It was decided in a meeting of all the heads of public sector institutes of cardiology at Civil Secretariat. Health Secretary Najam Ahmed Shah chaired the meeting. The DRAP chairman participated in the meeting through video link from Islamabad.

The committee constituted by the secretary included Prof Dr Azhar Kiyani, Prof Nadeem Hayat Malik, Prof Saqib Shafi and Prof Anjam Jalal. The committee would submit a list of unregistered stents and other products along with the names of manufacturing companies. It was decided that all such companies would apply for registration to the DRAP and the authority would register quality products according to the list recommended by the experts’ committee within a month.

Hepatitis-C: Punjab Health Department has said that the department has purchased medicine for hepatitis-C patients at the rate of Rs 54.35 with four conditions; serialisation of each pack, separate packing of one month medicine course for a patient, courier services and so much so lab testing of the medicine from international drug testing laboratory.