HYDERABAD: Muttahida Qaumi Movement-Pakistan’s chairman and Federal Education Minister Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui has said that this jagirdarana democracy will not allow Pakistan to progress.

MQM had always encouraged people from middle class to contest polls and reach parliament through peoples’ votes. Sindh’s urban centres were going to play an important role in the future of the country, he said.

Mr Siddiqui was speaking at inauguration ceremony for the Institute of Technology and Management Sciences in Kohsar, Latifabad, on Wednesday.

He said that MQM was finally able to get a federal institute for Hyderabad after several years. The institute could not be called a university due to some legal and technical impediments, he said and expressed hope it would soon develop into a big university and benefit the entire region.

He said that Hyderabad needed a university. It was its right not a demand, which had become a burning desire of people of the city, he said.

Unfortunately, he said, there were some people who did not want education themselves and at the same time did not like others to get education. That was why it took 70 long years to give a university to this city, he regretted.

He said the entire world was going to change due to fast occurring changes in the many fields of science. Even graduates of Oxford, Harvard and Cambridge universities could not predict what the world would be like in future, he said.

Mr Siddiqui said: “If we don’t take required steps the Artificial Intelligence and biotechnology will thoroughly change the world and people will find it hard to understand the technologies.”

He said that education was a right and not alms. This right had been secured for every child of this area and 100-acre tract of land had been obtained for the purpose, he said.

He said that universities were established across the country but someone had vowed that a university in Hyderabad would be built on his dead body. He was alluding to a PPP education minister who had made such a statement around a decade back.

He said that MQM had never desired to have education portfolio.

Later, taking to journalists Mr Siddiqui criticised disruptions in Internet connectivity and said in a lighter vein that a ‘fly’ should not be killed with a cannon. Billions of rupees had been lost in the name of handling ongoing situation, he said.

He said that constitution allowed protests but not violence and provocation. Those who had closed doors of negotiations must understand that talks were the only way to resolve contentious issues but unfortunately these were not being held, he said.

He said that MQM itself would build a medical college if the government did not establish it.

About Sindh’s water issue, he said that decision on canals projects must be taken after evolving consensus among all provinces considering the fact that Sindh was at tail-end of Indus River system and its recommendations were always paramount.

The Higher Education Commission chairman Dr Mukhtiar Ahmed, rector of the newly established institute Dr Saeeduddin Sheikh, MPA Sabir Kaimkhani and Prof Abdul Qadeer also spoke at the ceremony.

Published in Dawn, November 28th, 2024