Youth festival competition
LAHORE (PR): Art, Handicraft and Cooking Competitions were held at Govt. College of Home Economics in connection with Punjab Youth Festival 2014. Prof. Rafia Tahir was the focal person of these competitions. Qurat-ul-Ain Tahira of Govt. College for Women Samanabad won the first prize in Painting Competition, Ammara Raza of Govt. College of Home Economics, Gulberg, Lahore bagged first prize in a competition of Handicrafts.
In cooking competition, 20 colleges of Lahore participated. On the theme of Punjabi Culture various dishes were prepared and displayed beautifully in a traditional manner. Sara Ashfaq of Govt. College of Home Economics, Gulberg, Lahore won the first prize, second prize was grabbed by Saira Mudessar of Govt.
Ayesha Degree College and the third prize was clinched by Govt. Kinnaird College Lahore. It is noteworthy that these competitions are playing a vital role in highlighting the hidden talents of the youth. They instill a passion for work among the students.
ACCA Careers partners with eFinancialCareersGulf
LAHORE (PR): ACCA Careers, the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants’ official careers website, has partnered with eFinancialCareersGulf, the leading financial services careers site. The initiative will showcase the region’s economic strength and professional diversity andhighlight the opportunities available tothose considering a career in accountancy and finance.
ACCA Careers will host eFinancialCareers’ regional opportunities and each will collaborate to support candidates by sharing careers advice and finance recruitment insight. The complementary relationship will provide finance and accounting students and professionals in the Gulf with an avenue to target career progression and explore the region’s strength as a destination for finance talent from all over the world.
Neil Johnson, editor of ACCA Careers: ‘We’re very pleased to be working with eFinancialCareers. They’re a well-respected brand in global finance recruitment and we see our partnership as highly complementary, with real benefits for students and qualified finance professionals in the Gulf, as well as for those interested in moving to the region. ACCA has a very large and mobile audience in MENASA and so we’re excited to be providing greater access to opportunities.’
SBP awards contract
to Wateen
LAHORE (PR): Wateen, leading ICT service provider in networking technology, solutions and services, proudly announces that it has been awarded a three year Managed Services contract by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) to provide VSAT Hub & Spoke operations, field maintenance and technical support to connect its Head office and 14 regional and branch offices.
Being the central bank of Pakistan with countrywide operations, State Bank of Pakistan felt the need to centralize its applications to reach all its branches. Wateen’s VSAT Bandwidth on PAKSAT Satellite will connect 15 State Bank sites. This will reduce the costs on distributed backend operations of State Bank of Pakistan by bringing them to the front end with the centralization of core backend applications. During this three year project, starting this month, Wateen Telecom will maintain PAKSAT satellite Bandwidth and will provide 24-hour (SLA) services to State Bank of Pakistan.
Wateen Telecom won this project after tough competition with other vendors, primarily due to the company’s big customer clientele of VSAT and excellent support model in telecom sector.
Lotte group expands
investment in Pakistan
LAHORE (PR): The groundbreaking ceremony of Kolson’s (Lotte Group Company) new manufacturing site in Sundar Industrial Area, Lahore was carried out at a local hotel. The ceremony was attended by the Chief Minister of Punjab, Mian Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif, KagGyu Hwang (President & Head of Group Strategy & Vision, Lotte Headquarters), Mr. Mangko Noh (CGO/Kolson BOD CM), Abdul Latif (CEO Kolson) and other important dignitaries from the Government and Business sector.
Lotte Group, Korea is expanding its investment base in Pakistan by setting up its new state-of-the-art confectionary plant in Sundar Industrial Estate, Lahore. This plant would bring in investment worth over Rs 2 billion to Pakistan and shows Lotte’s growing confidence and interest in Pakistan’s economy and consumer base. The investment will add to the economic growth of Pakistan and Punjab and will also provide numerous new employment opportunities in Lahore.
Lotte believes that Pakistan presents promising opportunities in terms of business and is looking forward to bring in more investment in the future. This was stated by Mr. KagGyu Hwang (President & Head of Group strategy & Vision, Lotte Headquarters) in his address to the gathering. Speaking at the occasion, Mian Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif appreciated Lotte’s efforts and also expressed his complete support in encouraging further investment initiatives by Lotte in Punjab and Pakistan.
Shell Eco-Marathon Asia welcomes 8 Pak teams
LAHORE (PR): Students from all across Asia and the Middle East arrived in Manila to tackle a street circuit in Manila, with the fuel efficient vehicles they designed and built. The 109 student teams are there to compete in the fifth edition of Shell’s annual Shell Eco-marathon Asia, 8 teams from 11 Pakistani universities will also be present.
This will be the first year Shell Eco-marathon Asia takes place in Manila, having previously been held at the Sepang International Circuit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. The new urban setting is designed to test the boundaries of fuel efficiency in a real world environment. Success is not measured by speed but by who can drive farthest on alitre of fuel.
Student teams may participate in the Prototype or Urban Concept vehicle categories of the competition. The Prototype category will see student teams entering cars of the future – streamlined vehicles focused on maximising fuel-efficiency through innovative design elements, such as drag reduction.
The Urban Concept category will focus on more “roadworthy” fuel-efficient vehicles. Aimed at meeting the real-life needs of drivers– these vehicles are closer in appearance to the higher-mileage cars seen on the roads today. A total of 71 Prototype and 38 Urban Concept vehicles have been entered for this year’s competition.
£2.7 million District Delivery Challenge Fund unveiled
LAHORE (PR): Government of Punjab unveiled a £2.7 million District Delivery Challenge Fund (DDCF) to support public service delivery in Punjab. Speaking at the launching ceremony which was attended by stakeholders from public, private, civil society, academia, development and non-government organisations, Muhammad Irfan Elahi, Chairman Planning and Development, Punjab lauded it as another significant milestone by Government of the Punjab to spur innovation in public service delivery at the district level.
Financed by the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID), DDCF has been launched as an open competition run by the Sub-National Governance (SNG) programme in collaboration with Government of the Punjab to inspire ideas for better public services through limited grants. Mr. Bill Kilby, the Head of Governance from the DFID in Pakistan committed continued support towards improving sub-national governance and public service delivery for the poor in Punjab.
The Fund will support the provincial and district governments of Punjab to identify new and sustainable solutions through innovative pilots that work towards making public services more responsive to local people’s needs. The objective is to identify new and potentially scalable ideas in local service delivery that have not yet been tried in Punjab. The first public service being targeted through the DDCF is school education in the six districts of Sahiwal, Vehari, Bahwalnagar, Sheikhupura, Mandi Bahauddin and Hafizabad in Punjab. Subsequent rounds will focus on other public services, such as health.
Mr. Zafar Iqbal Qureshi, Senior Governance Advisor for Government of the Punjab appreciated the District Delivery Challenge Fund as an effective mechanism for delivering innovations in school education. For the first round, the organisations that show the most potential for encouraging innovative ways to increase children’s access to schools or to improve the quality of primary school education will be selected through a transparent and competitive process to produce innovative pilot projects, using grants of as much as £50,000 to £250,000 each.