LAHORE: Punjab Governor Chaudhry Muhammad Sarwar on Monday urged the university scientists to play their role in addressing the challenge of food security and malnutrition in the country by contributing to enhancing livestock productivity. He was presided over the 12th convocation of the University of Veterinary and Animal Sciences (UVAS), in which, Punjab Minister for Livestock & Dairy Development Sardar Hasnain Bahadur Dareshak, Punjab Livestock Secretary Naveed Haider Sherazi, faculty members, industrialists from dairy, poultry and pharma industries were present. Governor Sarwar congratulated the graduating students and urged them to work hard, serve humanity, be entrepreneurs and job-providers instead of becoming seeking-seekers. He lauded the progress achieved by the UVAS in the world’s universities ranking and especially in its vital role in fight against COVID-19 pandemic.
Presenting the welcome address, Vice Chancellor Nasim Ahmad spoke about the academics, research, development, extension programmes, various initiatives and community services of the university. He said that with a history of 139 years of excellence, the UVAS was now among top Asian universities as per the higher education and QS world universities rankings. The UVAS got 4th position among public sector universities of Pakistan in the Higher Education Commission Sports Ranking. He said the UVAS encouraged its students by providing them incentives in shape of merit and need based scholarships. The university awarded 1,434 scholarships of Rs104 million during the last year, he added. a total of 2,764 graduates were conferred degrees and 131 position-holders awarded medals. Out of the graduating students, 73 were PhDs, 732 MPhil, 477 DVMs, 847BS (Hons), 161 Pharm-D, 57 Doctors of Nutrition and Dietetics, 84 MBAs and 79 BBA (Hons). Earlier, the Governor Punjab who is also Chancellor of public sector universities, along with Vice Chancellor gave away degrees to PhD scholars and medals to the position-winning graduates.