Govt releases over Rs2b for HEC scholars

ISLAMABAD - Ministry of Finance has finally released the much-awaited amount of Rs 2.819 billion to the Higher Education Commission needed for financing the government-sponsored scholars studying at various world universities.
The amount has been provided to the Commission as Human Resource Development component of third quarterly instalment of development grant to help meet the financial requirements of the students.
HEC was under immense pressure as some 4,000 scholars, sent purely on the government-funded scholarship abroad for higher studies, were facing difficulties to meet the expenses of tuition and accommodation in their respective foreign institutes/universities.
The issue of releasing the funds had been lying pending before the government's economic managers for the last couple of months, calling the delay due to economic crisis in the country. TheNation has highlighted the issue after learning about the miseries of the Pakistani students abroad.
The voice of the poor students was finally heard in the power corridors.
The government had earlier applied massive cut on the HEC funds, which resulted in stoppage of stipends of thousands of HEC scholars, studying under HEC Scholarship Scheme within the country as well as abroad.
The funds would be distributed to wipe out the immediate liabilities of the indigenous as well as the scholars studying abroad. At present the HEC has over 4,000 MS and PhD scholars studying abroad while it funds 4,300 scholars studying in local universities with over 900 MBBS students in Cuba.
The released funds will be utilised to ease the immediate requirements of these scholars on priority basis.
As far as the remaining liabilities of 3rd quarter of current financial year are concerned, the Ministry of Finance is considering to release of the immediate liabilities of salary and civil work component of the development funds during current quarter.