KARACHI, Jan 26: Federal Minister for Education Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani said here on Monday that a National Education Policy (NEP) was in the final stages of its completion and would be announced within a month.

The minister, who was talking to newsmen after presiding over the first convocation of the Federal Urdu University of Arts, Sciences and Technology (FUUAST), said that though the existing NEP (1998-2010) was meant for 12 years, its revision by the federal education ministry had been initiated much before its expiry as its framework had been found to constitute an unsatisfactory guide and had failed to provide the desired results.

Earlier, 850 students of FUUAST were awarded bachelor’s, master’s, LLM and PhD degrees by the vice-chancellor of the university, Prof (Dr) Mohammad Qaiser, at a ceremony held on the university campus.

The federal minister awarded gold medals to all those who topped in their respective faculties. They included four masters degree-holders belonging to the arts faculty; four masters of the science faculty, three masters of business management, commerce and economics faculties. Besides, merit certificates were given to the position-holders of the university’s honours programme.

Delivering his presidential speech, the minister in his capacity as the pro-chancellor of the university felicitated the graduates and urged them to keep abreast with the modern trends of education as educated youths alone were the future of the nation.

Lauding the efforts made by the university in promoting education, the minister said it was a matter of pride for him that a university that got its charter only six years back was imparting modern education of international standards in arts, science and technology to a large number of students enrolled at its Karachi and Islamabad campuses.

“It’s a known fact that the universities are recognised by their standard of education, research and hard work and as such the Urdu university doesn’t lag behind any university,” he said, adding that a considerable number of students of this university were involved in research within the country and abroad and a number of them had successfully done their MPhil and PhD.

Speaking about the university’s financial and other problems highlighted by the vice-chancellor in his speech, the minister said the federal education ministry would extend its full cooperation to the university in resolving all such issues.

At the outset, he congratulated all graduates, recipients of gold medals and their parents, and expressed hope that they would try to serve the country and their alma mater. Speaking on the occasion, vice-chancellor Prof Mohammad Qaiser said that FUUAST, which got the status of university with the promulgation of an ordinance on Nov 13, 2002, was at present imparting education to students belonging to all four provinces, Azad Kashmir and the tribal areas. And 8,894 students were enrolled at its Karachi campus and 2,689 students were on its Islamabad campus.

Tracing the history of the varsity, he said that with the upgrade of the Urdu College, which was founded by Baba-i-Urdu Maulvi Abdul Haq on June 25, 1949 at Karachi, Baba-i-Urdu’s dream to make it into a university had been realised.