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KU M.Phil & PhD enrolment | SU & Moscow varsity collaboration
M.Phil and PhD enrolment from May
Karachi, April 24, 2008: The University of Karachi (KU) has decided to admit the students
for M.Phil and PhD research from May 2008. The admissions will be limited to the
departments which have prepared courses for the students who will be
enrolled.
The decision was tentatively taken in a meeting of the Board of
Advance Studies and Research (BASR), chaired by the Vice Chancellor Prof.
Pirzada Qasim. It was decided that a comprehensive programme for the fresh
intake will be announced in a couple of days.
Moreover, Prof. Rais Alvi
said on Wednesday that the university will conduct tests for
prospective students and then they will have to complete a one year course of 24
credit hours before they are admitted to the M.Phil/PhD course. He said that
many departments have failed to prepare the prescribed courses due to which the
university had been unable to initiate the fresh admissions.
Prof Alvi
explained that the Higher Education Commission (HEC) has introduced stringent
methods for the courses in order to enhance the standard of research and the
university was following those rules. The departments that have no PhD teachers
will not be allowed to take the research students. The university will also
decide as to how many students can be accommodated in a department. The News
KU institute gives up on Oct 18 probe
Karachi: A police investigation into the Oct 18 attacks on
Benazir Bhutto's homecoming procession has reached an impasse as the Dr A.Q.
Khan Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering, which was given the
remains of killed men for possible DNA matching, has not taken up the challenge
of identifying all the remains with the relatives of the missing
persons.
Instead the scientists at the institute focused DNA profiling
only on the remains of the suspected suicide bomber. This disclosure has come as
a rude shock to the inefficient police force relying heavily on scientific
expertise of the prestigious institute.
Some of the senior faculty
members have confirmed that the institute was never supposed to go for what they
described as an impossible task of matching DNA profiles of the human remains
with those of citizens claiming that their loved ones have been missing since
the fateful day. This moment of truth has come out after six months of delay
with the change of guard at the institute in Karachi University.
This
disclosure is also earth-shattering news for the families of half a dozen
missing persons, who deposited blood samples twice on the instructions from the
institute and police so that they could get a sense of closure.
Despite
the burial of the remains of unidentified victims of the Oct 18 carnage last
month in Garhi Khuda Bux by the Pakistan People's Party, such families hoped
that the scientific search would one day resolve the mystery of their missing
relatives.
"With the latest disclosure, I think my family will never come
to know about my brother," said Farooq Awan, elder brother of Rizwan, who is
among more than a dozen people missing since Oct 18.
With tears welling
up in his eyes as he came out of the university, where he was informed by an
official of the Dr A.Q. Khan Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering
about the DNA test reports, Farooq said he believed that with the burial of the
unidentified victims' remains, unexpected reports from the institute had left
his and other families of missing persons in an unending pain, grief and
desperation.
More than half a year after the incident, the whole exercise
appears to be a story of non-professional and insensitive attitude of the
professionals, institutions and the law-enforcers investigating the
case.
First the police delayed the delivery of the blood samples to the
institute and then it was the Dr A.Q. Khan Institute of Biotechnology and
Genetic Engineering that took more than four months to finalize the
process.
"It was a fault of the previous management, which put on hold
the whole exercise without any logical reason," said a senior official at the
institute.
"With the start of the process, we requested our seniors to
inform the investigators that the institute could only compile DNA test reports
for the suicide bombers and not the missing persons."
He said the sacked
management of the institute neither informed the police about its capability nor
it initiated the process on time, which caused disappointment to the missing
persons' families and could also damage the reputation of the
institute.
"Actually the process, required for the missing persons'
identification, demands too much cost, which the institute could not afford.
Some 54 samples collected from the unidentified remains were not contaminated
and required extremely precise process," he said.
All such facts, he
added, were in the knowledge of the previous management but it mysteriously
remained tightlipped and did not come up with facts before the police and the
families of the missing persons.
The official claims may satisfy the
current management of the Dr A.Q. Khan Institute of Biotechnology and Genetic
Engineering, but it has put a question mark over the discipline of the
accountability within the institution.
The families of the missing
persons, keenly waiting for DNA test results, are least bothered about the
capability of the institute. Most of them feel deceived both by police and the
institute.
More than 20 people went missing after attacks on the welcome
convoy of Benazir Bhutto near Karsaz on October 18, 2007, which killed more than
150 people and left over 400 injured. Disappointed with the lethargic and hectic
process to trace them either dead or alive, most of the families of such missing
persons later gave up the search.
By the end of the process some half a
dozen families, however, were found determined for the search of their loved
ones and deposited their blood samples with the police to match those with the
DNA profiles created from the remains of unidentified victims of the tragedy
some four months ago.
However, police find themselves in shock. A senior
police, who was in liaison with both the missing persons' families and the
institute, said he was never given any indication about the process and its
outcome.
"We were very much confident that we would be handed over
complete results whenever the tests concluded," he said, and added: "That's why
I was personally in touch with the families and shared their grief and hope that
one day it would be clear whether their relatives were alive."
He said
the institute provided police the report about the 'suspected suicide bombers'
and reached the conclusion that the samples sent to the institute were of three
different persons.
"The test report concludes that all the three tissues
of brain, face and head are of male individuals. The DNA profiles generated from
each tissue were different from one another. It concludes that the three tissues
from brain, face and neck belong to three different individuals and they are not
biologically related to one another," the official quoted the report as
saying.
After more than half a year, which ended with no results for the
families of missing persons, now appears another challenge for the new political
administration, as the families want the government to take up the issue of
enormous carelessness and inhuman approach of the officials and institutions
concerned.
"When the incident took place and by the time such an exercise
began, it was not the PPP government that took up the initiative," said Farooq,
brother of missing Rizwan. "Now at this point of time, we expect our party will
take up the issue and hold the people accountable for such
irresponsibility."
SU plans collaboration with Moscow varsity
Hyderabad: Sindh University syndicate at a meeting on Tuesday
approved a memorandum of understanding with the Moscow State University, Russia,
to undertake collaborative research and exchange of faculty, students, and
research projects.
The meeting was presided over by University
Vice-Chancellor Mazharul Haq Siddiqui.
It approved the names of noted
scientist Prof. (Dr) M.Y. Khuhwar, Project Director High-Tech Central Resource
Laboratories and Professor (Dr) M. Umar Dahot, Director Institute of
Biotechnology and Genetic Engineering for a committee from University of Sindh
and Dr Maluchenko N.V, Deputy Dean of International Cooperation, Dr Alexander I.
Netrusov and renowned Scientist Dr Alexander M. Semenov from Russia University
who would monitor the progress of agreement and review future directions as well
as programmes.
The meeting also appointed Dr Tanver Junejo as Chairperson
of the department of Sociology and Dr Mohammad Ali Bhatti as Director of the
Institute of Art and Design.
To appoint the professor emeritus in the
university the syndicate constituted a committee headed by the vice chancellor
with learned scholar Dr N.A Baloch and Dr A.Q. Mughal as its members.
The
syndicate meeting enhanced the medical allowance from rupees one thousand to two
thousand for university employees from BPS-1 to 22.
Syndicate of University of Sindh member nominated
The governor of Sindh, who is the chancellor of the University of
Sindh, has nominated Professor (Dr) Iqbal Ahmed Panhwar, Dean Faculty of Social
Sciences as member Syndicate of University of Sindh with immediate effect and
till Jan 9, 2011, the date of his retirement.
LLB examination forms date extended
The controller of examinations, University of Sindh, has extended date up to April,
30, 2008, with late fee of Rs500 for submission of examination forms for LLB
Part-I, Part-II and Part-III (fresh and failure) under annual examination
2007.
Meanwhile, the registrar of the university has extended the date up
to May 2, for provisional admissions to MA, MSc and M.Com (previous) for the
session 2006-2007, in affiliated postgraduate colleges of the university. Dawn
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