President stresses swift decision-making to be at par with fast-changing world.

LAHORE: President Dr. Arif Alvi on Monday stressed swift decision-making process in the country to bring it at par with the fast-changing world. He expressed these views in an interactive session with PhD faculty and PhD International Relations scholars from the University of Lahore (UoL) here at Governor's House, where University Rector Prof. Dr. Muhammad Ashraf and UoL think-tank's head Dr. Rabia Akhtar were also present. President Alvi said that the information-technology (IT) sector of Pakistan had the potential for speedy development, asserting that Pakistan had a huge number of youths who could be equipped with the IT skills as the world was looking toward Pakistan to fulfill its IT sector needs. The president said that an educated youth and a skilled workforce were the most essential ingredients for moving forward, but unfortunately the pace of producing IT educated youth was very slow compared to the neighbouring countries. He highlighted that the most practical and speedy way to fill the gap between the required numbers of graduates was shifting our education system to internet-based online and hybrid modes, which were now increasingly being practised very successfully in different countries. He called upon all stakeholders to ensure that all school-going children were admitted to schools and all intermediate passing students were admitted to higher education institutions (HEIs). He added that country's rate of primary enrolment was only 68 per cent compared to other regional countries' rate of over 98pc, whereas higher education enrolment was only nine per cent compared to around 60 per cent of other regional countries. This, he said, was not sufficient to provide much-needed quality human resources required for achieving accelerated socioeconomic growth in the country. He said that the low enrolment rate at the...