Sindh is the only province in the country from where more than 7,000 deserving students are receiving higher education in public and private sector universities across the country under the scholarship programme of the Sindh Educational Endowment Fund Trust.
Sindh Education and Culture Minister Syed Sardar Ali Shah made these remarks while chairing a recent meeting of the board of trustees of the endowment fund trust.
He stressed the need for increasing the amount of fund and number of scholarships. The meeting was attended by College Education Secretary Ahmed Bakhsh Narejo, Sindh Education Foundation Managing Director Qazi Abdul Kabir, Sukkur Institute of Vice Chancellor Dr Asif Ahmed Shaikh, Finance Head of Institute of Business Administration Karachi Maed Sultan and other members of the board. It reviewed the performance of the endowment fund trust.
A total of seven agendas were presented at the meeting that was told that the investment capital of the trust was Rs6.811 billion and the total amount with interest was around Rs7 billion, that including an annual addition of Rs2 billion by the Sindh government.
It was said that the income obtained from the interest on the capital investment of the Sindh trust was utilised to meet the educational expenses of deserving students. The provincial minister said the trust should not rely solely on government funds, and should invite philanthropists and other institutions to join it.
The meeting was informed that scholarships were given in 11 disciplines in universities, to which the provincial minister said that other disciplines should also be included according to market requirements.
Shah said that students benefitted from the scholarship after they had completed their first year in the university. He suggested that students be assisted in getting admissions under the scholarship programme so that they could benefit from the scholarship in their first year as well. A committee was formed to develop an action plan in this regard.
It was suggested that the universities should be bound to provide information about the Sindh Education and Endowment Fund Trust scholarship on their website and admission advertisements, and the seats of universities that failed to meet the scholarship target be given to other universities that performed better or had a higher number of students.
The education minister said that a new mechanism for obtaining scholarships should be tested and merit should be maintained. An online mechanism for scholarship interviews should also be established, he added.
It was said that scholarships from the Sindh Education and Endowment Fund Trust had been awarded to students studying at 83 universities in the country.
