Testing failed recipe

As if the present PTI government in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa has not learned lesson from the fiasco of setting up technical university on the Botanical Garden of University of Peshawar at Azakel near Nowshera. That inherently unsound but made grandiose technical education promotion project with public relations exercise was the brain child of former Chief Minister Pervaiz Khattak. The matter then became subjudice. It appears that his ghost is still all pervading in the present government as well. The decision of winding up Agriculture Research Institute in Swat for opening a full fledged University on its premises exposes the mindset of testing the failed recipe.

The fruit growers of Swat has expressed deep resentment over this ill conceived decision of the provincial government because the existing research institute has rendered meritorious services by evolving different kinds of delicious and high yield fruit plants. The redundancy and zero research facilities at the Peshawar and Swabi campuses of Agriculture Universities provide a strong rational for keeping intact the Agriculture Research Institute at Swat and give credence to the demand of fruit growers for temporarily staring the classes of Agriculture University in a rented building and acquiring land at suitable location later. It is pertinent to mention that Swabi University of basic sciences and humanities was first established in a temporary premises and it shall be shifted to a vast new building alongside motorway M-1.

The current century is the century of knowledge explosion and new disciplines of applied science are emerging at a fast speed. Every new university must have a proviso for providing space and accommodation for the emerging branches of old disciplines. Sometimes as matter of financial stringency and urgency a university of applied sciences starts classes of management sciences. That is why Agriculture University of Peshawar had to start BBA and MBA classes from the decade of 90s despite the financial grant it used to receive from University Grant Commission of the federal government till 2001 and then from Higher Education Commission. After the devolution of higher education and control of public sector universities to the federating units under the much eulogized 18th Amendment the provincial government is not giving financial grant to these institutions. Hence, it would be worthwhile to refrain from winding up a useful and fully functional Agriculture Research Institute and select a feasible site for the establishment Agriculture University at Swat.

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