Keeping its tradition of ‘haste makes waste’ alive, the Punjab government has changed the criteria for distributing laptops amongst talented public sector university students at the last stage of registration, with the new criterion making students enrolled in evening programmes at public sector universities ineligible. Earlier, the same students had been declared eligible for the scheme and a large number of students had submitted their applications under the category. Taking notice of the issue, the Higher Education Department held a workshop to train public sector university staff in compiling data for the scheme. The last date for registering for the scheme is December 31. Pakistan Today also leant that there were many serious mistakes in the compilation of lists and a large number of students were left unregistered while the final ‘corrected’ lists are yet to be uploaded on the website. Many students were found complaining and protesting against the scheme on Friday. At Punjab University where most of the departments have evening programmes is the worst hit institute according to the new policy.
On Thursday PU Institute of Education and Research students staged a protest against the scheme. Farrukh, an evening student of Masters in Technical Education, said the government should have planned it earlier whether or not they were eligible for the scheme. Abdul Hannan, an MBA student in University of Engineering and Technology Lahore, said the whole process, except the advertisement part, was enshrouded in mystery since the day first of the project’s launch. “Earlier we all were eligible and now all of a sudden we are ineligible,” he complained. Similarly some students pointed out flaws in the laptops distribution process citing different marks awarding system for different faculties. They said in some departments it was rare to score 70 percent marks. The Punjab University officials said they had sent final lists of eligible students to the Punjab government twice and were compiling another list according to the new criteria. Mavra Ahmad, a student of Institute of Business Administration, said it had always been a habit of the Punjab government to announce a project in haste and then review it to fix discrepancies in that. Higher Education Department Secretary Ejaz Muneer was unavailable for comment.
Students protest against changed laptop scheme criterion
