Kaira assures setting up of Educational TV channel at AIOU

Federal Minister for Information Qamar Zaman Kaira has assured of the information ministry full cooperation for Allama Iqbal Open University’s (AIOU) non-commercial “Educational TV Channel”, an initiative of Educational Media Institution.
Addressing the participants of the Seeratun Nabi Conference held at Nusrat Bhutto Auditorium of the AIOU, he said that he would try to accomplish the task within the remaining tenure of the incumbent government, adding that Radio Pakistan and Pakistan Television (PTV) would also be requested to train the manpower for the proposed channel.
The minister regretted that Muslims were facing problems in their daily lives because they had failed to apply the teachings of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) in their practical lives, instead of leading hypocritical lives.
On the occasion, the AIOU Vice-Chancellor (VC) Prof Dr Nazir Ahmed Sangi said that the university was striving to design its syllabus with an objective of increasing the knowledge base of students and to nourish the character of the youth.
He stressed that besides teaching morality through radio and television channels, the university would print moral lessons on the cover of the 2.5 million books printed every semester, adding that refresher courses would also be arranged for muezzins and khateebs of mosques to train them according to modern trends so that they could spread the message to the masses through their sermons.
Furthermore, he disclosed that the AIOU had launched a project to bring back drop-out students towards education, adding that in the first phase, around 10,500 students had been enrolled in the university.
The AIOU VC said that they had set a target to teach another 15,000 in Chitral next year. We had always been utilising all their potential and resources for the cause of expanding and strengthening educational network in the country.
“AIOU has the best radio and TV studios. All educational radio and TV programmes of the university are prepared here under the supervision of the most trained producers and engineers,” Dr Nazir said.
Moreover, he said that the AIOU was working on a vision to promote its educational activities to the students living in the rural areas to ensure that everyone had equal access to quality education.
It was also announced on the occasion that AIOU would also start an open-schooling programme titled “Educate a Child”, and a target had been set to educate one million children through this scheme. Besides, the initiative would also focus on the introduction of socio-economic and skill-based courses, so that students would be able to earn their livelihood and take part in the country’s overall development.
Meanwhile, Dr Sangi suggested including “Non-commercial TV channels” in the AIOU Educational Media Institution.
International Islamic University Vice-President Prof Sajidur Rehman suggested to the information minister to set up an exclusive unit at the university’s radio and TV channels to air research-oriented programmes in order to acquaint the community of basic Islamic moralities and guidelines.