HEC to utilize youth’s potential through quality education: Dr Atta
By Bushra Makhdoom

ISLAMABAD—Federal Minister and Chairman Higher Education Commission, Professor Dr Atta-ur Rehman on Thursday said that the commission was committed to exploit the latent potential of the youth through quality education to achieve national prosperity.
He was addressing the 11th All Pakistan Inter-university debate contest in which a total of 30 students from different universities took part, was organized ,here, by HEC and Ministry of Education to promote communication skills and critical thinking among the students.
The chairman said that a major bulk of the country’s population was youth and the HEC would make no compromise to utilize the hidden qualities of the lot through quality education.
Keeping the contemporary and future challenges in the mind, the chairmansaid the commission had launched several programmes with generous cooperation of the present government with the view to bringing the country at par with developed countries in terms of socio-economic development.
As part of such efforts, the Chairman said that HEC was offering severalscholarship proprammes and this year it would send about 800 students under such schemes for higher studies abroad. Similarly, he said that the HEC fully recognized the contributions of teachers as they played crucial role in moulding students into a useful entity of society and the massive raise in university teachers’ salaries was a testament to the fact.
Appreciating the winners, the Chairman said their speeches were reflective of their talent and appearing in such contests helped them, in practical life as well, to get across their views, effectively.
He advised the students to enjoy learning as a fun to exploit the wonders of the nature, thus they should direct their energies into conducting research in different phenomenon taking place around.
Asma Rabbani from Quaid-e-Azam University, Sophia Chee and Hamad Hafeez from Iqra University cliched first, second and third position in English debate, respectively.
While in Urdu debate, Farhan Ali from Jamshroo University, Murrad Saeedfrom Peshawar University and Rana Muhammad Ikram secured first, second and third position, respectively.
The top position holders were given cash prize worth Rs. 25,000, 20,000 and 15,000 respectively.