Karachi: The Sindh government has approved the applications of 2,267 deserving students to fully fund their higher education at public and private sector universities all over the country.
The scholarships are provided under the arrangement of the Sindh Educational Endowment Fund Trust whose board of trustees comprises relevant government and academic officials.
The trust thus year received 10,354 applications against 3,385 scholarships to be dispensed with under a need-cum-merit criteria of selecting deserving students.
Out of these applicants, applications of 2,267 students met the selection criteria. With the addition of these new applicants, the total number of Sindh-based students availing of the scholarships offered by the trust would cross 7,000.
The scholarship facility is available for deserving students domiciled in Sindh who get admission to 83 universities across Pakistan for getting higher education in 11 disciplines.
The endowment fund trust has a capital investment of Rs6.8 billion as the Sindh government contributes every year Rs2 billion to bear the educational expenses of all the selected deserving students.
Sindh Education Minister Syed Sardar Ali Shah said that Sindh was the only province that had been bearing the full expenses of higher education of so many students who despite belonging to the deprived communities had the urge and qualification to study at any prestigious university.
He said that more disciplines of higher education should be selected for the award of scholarships after evaluating their market value in terms of generating employment opportunities for university graduates.
Shah appealed to the concerned philanthropists and donors to come forward and generously contribute to the funds available with the trust to benefit a greater number of needy students.
He mentioned that government funds alone were not sufficient for the purpose.
He urged the officials concerned to ensure that scholarship money was available to the selected students as soon as they got admission to the universities so that they should be benefited with the commencement of their higher education.
He asked the universities that scholarships offered by the trust should be prominently mentioned on their websites and admission advertisements for the knowledge of prospective students from the deprived areas.
