ISLAMABAD:Coordinator General, COMSTECH, Professor Muhammad Iqbal Choudhary Wednesday said that distance education is critically important in the current circumstances especially during the post Covid situation to ensure access of Muslim world population to education.
He was speaking, as a chief guest, at the inaugural session of the 3rd General Assembly of COMSTECH Inter-Islamic Network on Virtual Universities (CINVU) at Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU).
Vice Chancellors/Presidents and officials from Iran, Bangladesh, Chad, Indonesia, Turkey and Afghanistan are attending it physically while officials from other OIC member states are attending virtually.
“Around 800 million young people are below the age of 25 among the 1.56 billion of the total population of Muslim world. We do not have sufficient infrastructure, universities, laboratories, institution for them to get education. If we don’t have it, this would be absolutely phenomenal danger which the Muslim Ummah will face in the future”, he said.
“The only way of improving access to education and making those productive citizens of their own countries is to adopt Virtual learning approach”, Professor Choudhary said.
He said that COMSTECH is an organization which is truly inspirational institution for the Muslim world as well as a premier institution and standing committee for promotion of scientific and technological developments chaired by President of Pakistan.
COMSTECH is the only intra government organization of the country which is an extremely potent and hugely important in science diplomacy initiative of the government.
“We are so proud that we are able to contribute in our own humble way in improving the science and technology profile of the Muslim world. We have 13 Inter-Islamic networks at this time. CINVU was established as one of the six networks as the result of the COMSTECH General Assembly decision”, he said.
CINVU is very active virtual network and was established about a decade ago when virtual education was not in the limelight. “Now we understand it is critically important component of education system that shows the vision and commitment of OIC towards education”, Professor Choudhary said.
He said that CINVU is one of three networks in Islamic Republic of Iran, the others two are Science and Technology Park and on Nonotechnology.
There are several networks and these are actually the institutional mechanisms of COMSTECH for implementing a lot of important initiatives including Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) agenda. These 13 networks spread over 10 states and are located in different regions of Muslim world focusing on different aspects of Science and Technology.
Highlighting the initiatives of COMSTECH, the Coordinator General said that COMSTECH has initiated major initiatives in West Africa and Sahel region there is need to conduct lot of activities literacy rate less than 50 percent .
Professor Choudhary pointed out that since Pakistan has diplomatic absence in many African countries so this is extremely important to move forward and use science and technology as a diplomatic offset of our absence and that is the reason COMSTECH thinks Africa is important.
He said that COMSTECH Network on Virtual Education is becoming more important in the context of post covid scenario.
Professor Choudhary recommended to showcase the accelerated development took place during Covid pandemic needs to be showcased through arranging three major exhibitions.
He said that education is the only driver of change and this is a time for us to move forward along with a tangible implementation plan for improving access to education.