KARACHI       -       Federal Minister for Education, Professional Training, National History and Literary Heritage Shafqat Mehmood on Saturday awarded 13 degrees of PhD and 27 gold medals to the successful students at the 28th Annual Convocation -2019 of Nadirshaw Edulji Dinshaw (NED) University of Engineering and Technology’s main campus here on Saturday.

Mehmood was chief guest while Chancellor of NED University, Governor of Sindh Imran Ismail, chaired the Convocation. The successful students who were awarded degrees in the Convocation include 2113 graduates and 843 masters.

Speaking on the occasion, Federal Education Minister Shafqat Mehmood said that the present government has firm resolve to give due status to engineers. He said that it was encouraging to know that 40 per cent of the total successful graduates in this Convocation are female engineers. The Federal Minister called upon the female engineers to pursue their dreams with devotion. The goal of development cannot be achieved without vibrant participation of the women, he added.

While stating the government’s vision and policy on education, the Minister also explained three-pronged strategy of Higher Education Commission (HEC). He said that access to higher education is the right of every citizen and we are decentralizing it at District level to make it accessible to our youth bulge. He said that unfortunately, our education policy has not focused on relevance between job market and education in the past.

Our government is making education market and job oriented as well by establishing new academic campuses for emerging sciences, he added. He also emphasized on quality education and advised the university and HEC to focus on development of teaching faculty and curriculum. He encouraged all the passing out students to go ahead with their dreams because the country has heralded a new Pakistan where the qualified lot of engineers would find enough space for emerging job opportunities especially in the private sector.

Mehmood congratulated Vice Chancellor NED University Dr. Saroosh Hashmat Lodhi and faculty on producing the best lot of engineers in the country as well as abroad. He assured all possible support on behalf of the government.