islamabad - The Higher Education Commission (HEC) will send 10,000 scholars to the United States for PhD studies from the next year in critical areas of agriculture and food security, medical and allied health sciences, energy, water, climate change, advanced digital technology and others.

Chairman HEC Dr Mukhtar Ahmad told APP here yesterday that Pakistan-US Corridor was conceptualized in June 2015 as a result of US-Pakistan Education, Science and Technology working group under the bilateral strategic dialogue. He said the government of Pakistan envisions enhancing enrolment in tertiary education up to 5 million by 2025 and outreach of HEIs at district level.

At this stage, the universities are facing shortage of 30,000 PhD qualified faculty members. These 10,000 PhDs would educate in the best US educational institutions and would give spectacular results, he added.

The government, he said, was committed to increase access to higher education and for that purpose sub-campuses and virtual campuses are being established at district level so as to enable aspiring students to gain higher education at their doorstep. The main responsibilities of a university include instruction, quality research, creating knowledge, encouraging innovation and industry linkage for contribution to the economy and university community relationship.

Dr Mukhtar Ahmed appreciated the government for increase in higher education funding during the last three years and hoped that US-Pakistan Knowledge Corridor will greatly help in building the knowledge economy.

 Meanwhile, the residents of sector G-8 and Iqbal Town have been facing the long hours of unscheduled electricity loadshedding.

Besides sector G-8, some other residential sectors of the federal capital and few localities of Rawalpindi have also been hit hard by this situation.

Rehman Khalid, a resident of Iqbal Town said, “We are experiencing unprecedented loadshedding of more than 10 hours daily. My children are spending several sleepless nights owing to loadshedding, especially at the midnight.”

The rural areas of the federal capital including Ghauri Town Phase-I, II and adjacent areas are also facing long hours of unscheduled loadshedding.

Zahra Nasir, a housewife of sector G-8 said, “This was very tough for me to make ready my children for school without electricity and this situation affects my daily routine.” When contacted, an official of Islamabad Electric Supply Company (IESCO) informed that main reason of shutdown of electricity was repair and maintenance work. He said if any area was facing unscheduled loadshedding, citizens should immediately register their complaint to the respective area SDO.