PESHAWAR
Industrialists and academicians on Saturday agreed to launch joint ventures and initiatives to further strengthen industries and academia linkages, what, they described the mutual collaboration as essential to fully capitalizing skills of graduating students of universities, especially to overcome the increasing unemployment issue.
In this regard, a six members committee was formed, which would be headed by President Sarhad Chamber of Commerce and Industry (SCCI) Hasnain Khurshid Ahmad, while other members of the body include HEC Executive Director Dr Shaista Sohail, from academia Dr Shahid Niaz Khan, Hina Akram, Dr Syed Asim Shah, while from business community S Minhajuddin.
The agreement was reached during a roundtable conference on “Industries, Universities Linkages” jointly organised by SCCI and Higher Education Commission of Pakistan here at the Chamber’s House, aimed at enhancing industries and academia linkage with mutual consensus and consultation.
The session was presided over by SCCI president Hasnain Khurshid Ahmad while HEC Executive Director, Dr Shaista Sohail acted as moderator during the day-long conference. HEC senior member, and former Deputy Chairman Planning, HEC Dr Muhammad Ikram participated in the conference through video-link.
Besides, SCCI vice president Javed Akhtar, executive member Haji Ghulam Hussain, S Minhajuddin, secretary agriculture government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Dr Muhammad Israr, heads/senior officers of the Office of Research Innovation & Commercialization (ORIC) from various public and private sector varsities, designed representatives from relevant departments, traders, industrialists and reps of relevant stakeholders were present on the occasion in a large number.
Participants of the moot identified the gaps and hurdles comprehensively that were hampering promotion of academia and industries linkages and gave a number of ideas and proposals to address all those issues.
They emphasized the need of devising long term policy to further strengthen linkages between industries and academia.
The participants urged the HEC to take pragmatic steps to the availability of financial and technical resources to ensure quality research in universities, besides to enlarge mutual collaboration between academia and industries.
The SCCI chief during his speech emphasized that coordination should be improved between industries and universities.
