Promotion of education govt’s top priority: governor

Punjab Governor Rafique Rajwana said that our education must be knowledge based and the education without knowledge is meaningless.
He said that students are the ray of hope for bright future of Pakistan and they should provide benefit of their degrees to Pakistan.
He was addressing Punjab University’s 124th convocation here on Saturday. Renowned scientist Dr Abdul Qadeer Khan, HEC Punjab Chairman Dr Nizam-ud-Din, PU Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Mujahid Kamran, renowned lawyer and former Senator S M Zafar, Controller of Examinations Prof Dr Shahid Munir, Registrar Prof Dr Liaqat Ali, VCs of various varsities including Dr Fazal Ahamd Khalid, Dr Fazal Rauf, Dr Hassan Amir Shah, intellectuals, deans of all faculties, heads of various departments, senior faculty members and a large number of degree holder students and their parents were present on the occasion.
Addressing the ceremony, Rajwana said that if the innocent children of Army Public School and martyrs of Operation Zarb-e-Azb could secure the country, then the graduating students could also play their role to put the country on the road to progress. Appreciating the blind student of University Law College, Yousaf Saleem, who obtained gold medal in LLB Honors programme, the governor said that we must learn the art of living from these people. He said that now Pakistan is making progress in the field of education and efforts were being made for promotion of education at federal and provincial level. He said that the Punjab government had also set up Punjab Higher Education Commission in this regard. He advised the students to help poor segments of the society.
Addressing the ceremony, Punjab University Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Mujahid Kamran said that genocide of the Muslims is going on and they are facing destruction only because they were not contributing to creation of new knowledge. He said that the Muslims were so much ignorant that they even could not count their dead bodies and this work was done by an Australian Jewish scientist Gideon Polya.
He said that in his book “Body Count” Gideon Polya said that there had been 1.3 billion avoidable deaths during the period 1950-2005 of which 600 million were Muslims. He said that in the recent Afghan war, around 4.9 million Afghans had been killed out of which 1.2 million were killed in bombings etc and 3.7 million Afghans died of diseases and lack of medicines till 2010. He said that 2.7 million Iraqis were killed in the recent Iraq war and five million children had become orphans. He said that our journalists and columnists should focus on these issues and highlight these problems. He said that America’s GDP was around 17 trillion and it spent 2 to 3 percent i.e. 340 to 510 billion dollars on research and development per year while Pakistan had a GDP of around 225 billion dollars only and was spending only 0.2 percent on research and development per year.
He said that 750 Ayaats of the Holy Quran stressed to resolve the mysteries of the world. He said that the nature had always rewarded those nations who followed these instructions of the Holy Quran. He congratulated the graduating students and advised them to help each other.