966 awarded degrees at UET convocation

PESHAWAR: A total of 966 graduates, including 18 PhD scholars, were awarded degrees at the convocation of University of Engineering and Technology (UET) for academic sessions of 2018-19 and 2019-20 here on Sunday.

About 48 gold medals were conferred upon students of undergraduate programmes for their distinctive positions.

Minister for Higher Education, Archives and Libraries/Pro-Chancellor UET Peshawar, Kamran Bangash, was the chief guest on the occasion.

The leading local industries, Fast Cables Ltd, was also awarded two cash prizes to the toppers, Sardar Umar Khitab and Syed Luqman Shah, of the Electrical Engineering Department of the university.

Kamran Bangash said the government was committed to solving the problems of universities and assured that resources were being utilised to provide facilities to teachers and students.

The challenges faced by the universities would be resolved soon, he added.

He said that in order to solve the financial issues of UET, the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had issued the grant of Rs40 million.

He congratulated the graduates for achieving a milestone from a prestigious university and urged them to work hard for building the nation.

In order to increase trade, industrialisation and economic activities, he informed, the government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had approved the projects of construction of 365 kilometers long Dera Ismail Khan-Peshawar Motorway and 81 kilometers Swat Motorway (Phase-II.

The two mega projects would serve as trade corridors as well as source for new job opportunities for young engineers, he added.

Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Iftikhar Hussain congratulated the graduates and their parents on their achievements and said that the future of the country was dependent on educating and grooming the students to understand the real challenges.

“The UET Peshawar had eight centres of excellence from which real outcomes are now seen in form of linkages and joint projects,” he said, adding, almost 300 faculty research projects have been awarded to UET, Peshawar.

He further said the UET had adopted the outcome based education system through which the major disciplines were now accredited under outcome based education.

He also highlighted the achievements of National Centres of Excellence in Robotics and Automation, Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security, and Big Data and Cloud Computing, Centre for Advanced Studies in Energy, Centre for Advanced Robotics and Automation Lab and Innovative Secured Systems Lab.