Industrialists and academics on Saturday agreed to launch joint ventures and initiatives to further strengthen linkage between industry and academia.
According to them, mutual collaboration is essential to fully capitalize the 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 and Dr Syed Asim Shah.
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 Dr Muhammad Ikram participated in the conference through video-link.
Participants 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.
Dr. Akram Shaikh through a video link during the conference also emphasized on boosting up academia and industries mutual collaboration by launching joint ventures, skill training programs and other interventions.
He suggested the SCCI and universities should sign MoUs and formulate a joint body to carry out and implement all proposals of the sitting today, as well as make efforts to address all those issues which were major obstacles in the way of industries and academia joint collaboration.
Dr Israr also spoke on the occasion and agreed with proposals of the participants regarding the strengthening academia and industries linkages and assured that the provincial government and his department would extend every possible support in this regard.
