HEC approves Rs100m for PU climatic research lab

LAHORE: Punjab University (PU) will establish “National Laboratory of Remote Sensing, GIS and Climatic Research” to do research on the reasons behind climate change in Pakistan and suggest its affordable solutions.

In this regard, Higher Education Commission (HEC) of Pakistan has approved initial funding of Rs 100 million for the establishment of the laboratory. PU Department of Space Science’s Dr Ziaul Haq is director and principal investigator of the lab while other co-principal investigators include Dr Syeda Adila Batool, Shahid Parvez, Asim Daud Rana, Dr Khalid Mahmood and Dr Salman Tariq, faculty members from the department.

Explaining the objectives of the national laboratory, Dr Ziaul Haq said Pakistan was amongst the most vulnerable countries facing climate change risks with very low technical, financial and professional capacity to adapt, mitigate and prevent its adverse impact. He said climate change aggravated the social inequalities and intensifies social factors leading to displacement, conflicts, instability and changes in migration patterns through extreme weather events with changing patterns, flooding, temperature rise, yield reduction, droughts, spread of infectious diseases, water scarcity, deforestation etc.

Dr Ziaul Haq said satellite borne data with proper GIS analyses could provide low cost and easy to adopt alternatives to adapt, mitigate and prevent climate change to support decision making systems of Pakistan. He said that the whole team was thankful to Vice Chancellor Prof Niaz Ahmad for his continuous support and encouragement during the academic competition process for the lab. He also thanked HEC for sanctioning funds for establishment of the lab.

Concern: Punjab University’s Council of Professionals (CoPs), a group of teachers, has expressed concerns over ‘indifferent’ attitude of the Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Association (FAPUASA) Punjab chapter towards a signed charter of demands between the association and the government.

In a recent meeting of executive committee of the CoPs, PU teachers expressed concerns over the issue observing that all the groups had supported Federation of All Pakistan Universities Academic Staff Association (FAPUASA) Punjab chapter despite reservations against PU-ASA in a bid to protect universities from the government’s move of snatching autonomy of public universities.

PU CoPs observed that despite passage of almost three weeks, since the charter of demands was signed by FAPUASA Punjab and the government, the same was not shared with the faculty members. The CoPs has demanded the FAPUASA Punjab to take teachers into confidence over progress made vis-à-vis the charter of demands, especially the one related to ante-date appointments.