National News

KOHAT, Dec 16 (APP):Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi Saturday said promotion of quality education was imperative for sustained economic progress and eradication of extremism, and responsibility rested on universities and colleges to prepare students for the upcoming challenges in that regard. He was addressing a function here after inaugurating the women campus of Kohat University of Science and Technology (KUST). Prime Minister Abbasi also performed the ground-breaking of mega infrastructure development projects, including dualization of 128-kilometer section of Sarai Gambila-Kohat Road and dualization of 73-kilometer Pindi Ghab-Kohat Road, besides expansion and widening of Indus Highway that would be completed at a cost of Rs32 billion in two years. The projects upon completion will help provide quality communication and educational facilities to the people, besides expending pace of economic development in southern districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). The prime minister said no nation could make progress without promotion of education, and science and technology. He said former prime minister Muhammad Nawaz Sharif had made promise for establishing of a women campus of KUST two years ago. The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) government had always fulfilled its promises and pledges made with the public and inauguration of the women campus was yet another pledge that was fulfilled today, he added. The development, economic prosperity and elimination of extremism, he said, were directly linked to the provision of quality education to youth and despite education being a provincial subject now under the 18th Constitutional Amendment the federal government was making concerted efforts to help the federating units for further improving the education sector. The prime minister said for moving forward on the path of economic progress and prosperity, “we need to have special focus on promotion of women education in the country, and educational institutes and universities have to come forward and produce quality manpower to achieve prominent position among the comity of developed nations.”