Urdu University facing budget constraints: VC

Islamabad
Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology (FUUAST) Vice Chancellor Professor Dr. Zafar Iqbal has said that the university was facing many problems due to lack of budget and other resources, however, students were being provided with quality education.
Talking to ‘The News’, the VC said that the FUUAST has six faculties, including arts, science, pharmacy, law and interfaith harmony. He said that the university has more than 10 regular teachers and most of them were Ph.D.
Dr. Zafar stated that the university could not start many programmes due to lack of land, however, now construction of university’s new campus was going on and it would have 10 buildings. “We will shift to the new campus by 2017”, he said.
He said that the university would initiate new language programmes, including English, German, French and Chinese. He said the university has sent more than 50 students abroad on scholarships among which 15 students had returned to Pakistan and remaining students would return the next year. Dr. Zafar said that disappearance of a few students in foreign countries was a common issue but it was rare at FUUAST.
He said that it was a common perception that FUUAST was providing education only in Urdu language, which was not right. “We are providing education in English language”, he said.
He was of the view that countries all over the world are providing education in their own national languages, but unfortunately no such education system was being introduced in Pakistan so far.
He also told that the FUUAST was keen to introduce the faculty of Security Management for which special fund was required. He said the university was also introducing bachelors of Home Management for women and professional and technical courses to minimise the unemployment in the country.
He stated that the university is also paying special attention towards strengthening social sciences, arts and humanities and recently FUUAST has been accorded the membership of Inter University Consortium for Promotion of Social Sciences, Arts and Humanities (IUCPSS) which is the largest network of 30 Pakistani universities.
I, along with vice chancellors of 20 universities, recently attended the meeting of the consortium at Abdul Wali Khan University where we had lengthy discussions over revival of social sciences and bridging gap between academia and policy makers. He assured that FUUAST, being member of the consortium, would play a vital role for meeting of the objectives of the consortium and FUUAST faculty members would also get an opportunity to undertake various collaborative research projects and other activities.
Answering questions, the vice chancellor said that zero tolerance policy has been adopted on any sort of corruption in the university and strict action would be taken in this regard.