Prime Minister Mir Hazar Khan Khoso on Tuesday approved the launch of a scheme for payment of tuition fee to students hailing from Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan and FATA who intended to do Masters, MPhil and PhD.
The scheme called “Prime Minister’s Tuition Fee Payment Scheme” was approved and launched in a high-level meeting in which Minister for Professional and Technical Education, Science and Technology and IT Sania Nishtar, officials of the PM’s Secretariat and the Ministry of Professional and Technical Education were present.
Sania briefed the prime minister on the salient features of the scheme. She told the prime minister that it was approved by the federal cabinet in June 2012 and a sum of Rs 500 billion was allocated for the purpose in the budget.
The scheme envisages that students from Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan and FATA will be provided tuition fee by the federal government so that they can undertake higher education.
She said the federal government would provide equity to students so that efforts could be stepped up to improve education standard in the country.
Sania said the scheme was pre-paid as the entire expenditure during the degree would be borne by the federal government.
The scheme further envisages that federal government will bear all educational expenditure of an estimated 10,825 students from the areas of which 9,128 students belonged to Balochistan.
The prime minister directed that gender parity must be maintained and the scheme should be available for the next five years.
He approved PhD students of Balochistan, Gilgit-Baltistan and FATA would be eligible for benefit from the scheme even if they got admission in universities and colleges outside their cities and regions.
He has also approved that students hailing from FATA would benefit from the scheme if they were admitted to universities and colleges in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.