Relaunch of PM laptop scheme may cut educational development projects

The Federal government has planned to re-launch Prime Minister Laptop scheme under Prime Minister’s Youth Programme (PMYP) with budgetary shortfall which resulted deduction of funds of many development projects at Higher Education Commission (HEC), Daily Times has learnt reliably. “Special Assistant to the Prime Minister on Youth Affairs (SAPM) Shaza Khawaja Fatima directly intervened in the matter. Subsequently, the HEC competent authorities were compelled to manage the budget for the Laptop Scheme from other development projects for higher education,” said a senior official privy to the development while wishing anonymity. He added, the scheme is politically visible and a best source to grab the youth. “It was not the first time that the SAPM Fatima made such intervention but it has become her routine these days that she is always busy getting political marks instead of making PMYP as target oriented. When Daily Times asked SAPM “is this not the fact that the project is being used for political point scoring as to capture youth in favour of PML-N?” she didn’t give a satisfactory answer. As per available information, currently the HEC is running over 100 projects of educational 100elopment worth around Rs 44 billion. “When ordered, the Planning and Development (P&D) wing had willy-nilly followed them as to manage the budget for the Laptop scheme from other ongoing projects,” said another senior administrative official at HEC. Last month, the federal government announced that it has planned to launch three major initiatives with an estimated cost of about Rs 30 billion to win over more than 150,000 families through two internship programmes and a laptop scheme. Under the initiatives, about 50,000 engineers and educated youth would be provided internships in the public and private sectors for up to one year. In particular, as per sources, Rs 10 billion was allocated for provision of free laptops to the students. However, HEC officials disclosed this scribe that it required around Rs 15 billion for fulfilling this scheme’s financial demand as, he explained, a target of as many as 100,000 laptops was fixed by the government to deliver them to the youth. The sources further added that many projects that are already being functioned under PMYP would be financially affected due to ill-planned scheme and curt approach of the SAPM as she has no care of other projects but to boost politically motivated schemes only. “The HEC has no funds to pay salaries to Innovation Award staffers, a project at the commission,” said a well-informed official, adding that total of Rs 80,000 remaining amount in the salary head of some other projects of PM Youth. “The PMYP staffers are being tortured by all ways to leave their jobs so that the allocated amounts for their salaries’ could be spent on the PM laptop scheme laptop scheme. When approached, Minister for Federal Education and Professional Training Rana Tanveer Hussain surprisingly disassociated his ministry from the entire episode by saying that the “ministry is not involved.” Initially, the PMYP was initiated by the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. At that time, the project was announced as Rs 20 billion budgetary allocations with the aim to facilitate the country’s youth by providing them assistance mainly through affordable education, soft loans and skill-based training. It had six projects including a laptop scheme. As soon as PTI came into the government, the party had renamed the PMYP to Kamyab Jawan Programme and also decided to shut down the Laptop scheme along with some other projects part of the PMYP. According to the PTI, it was merely for politically bribing to capture the youngsters to gain party support for PML-N. However, SAPM Shaza Khawaja Fatima termed the closure as ‘unfortunate’. “It was halted because the government changed and PTI decided to discontinue this great project unfortunately,” she regretted. She claimed that laptops are in the process of being procured by the HEC which, she said “is our implementation partner.” While responding to a query, the SAPM stated that the merit lists will be obtained manually through a process from Vice Chancellors with signed affidavits and as a second layer we have a portal where students will apply and they will be submitting all the results and paperwork. “The portal will automatically generate the merit list, which will eventually be tallied with the merit list that will be manually provided by the vice chancellors, so it’s a dual checking system,” she explained. The SAPM Fatima recalled that it has been very successful in the past, and it has gone through all the transparency tests including a complete Inquiry in the NAB regarding the last project where 500k laptops were given to students. A questionnaire was sent to the HEC media wing but no answer was received despite repeated reminders by this scribe.