Virtual University opens in impoverished Orangi Town of Karachi

Karachi: The Virtual University of Pakistan (VUP) has launched its campus in the underprivileged Orangi Town area of Karachi, one of Asia’s largest slum, to provide higher education opportunities to the young residents of the locality, especially in the field of IT.

The Orangi Town campus was completed in just one month’s time with provision of faculty rooms, visitors’ rooms, reception, computer rooms, video-conferencing rooms, places reserved for female students, storage for scientific equipment, and other such modern facilities. The Karachi Development Authority provided the building for establishing the campus. The campus will offer degree programmes in five different disciplines.

Federal Minister for IT, Syed Aminul Haque, who belongs to Muttahida Quami Movement (MQM) that represents people residing in urban parts of Sindh, inaugurated the VUP campus.

Speaking on the occasion, the Federal IT Minister said the government wants children belonging to the underprivileged and middle-income groups to get the same facilities of higher education as were available to the students of the elite sections of society.

He said skills development programme run under the aegis of the VUP had provided free licensing training related to the fields of IT to some 2.4 million youth to train them to become a part of digital economy for earning foreign exchange for the country.

Haque expressed gratitude to Karachi Administrator, Barrister Murtaza Wahab, for providing the building for setting up the campus of the VUP in the shortest possible time.

He said the MQM had fulfilled a promise made to the Orangi Town residents that their children wouldn’t be required to leave their area for higher education.

The IT Minister said that maximum number of IT-related development projects had been carried out by the government in rural parts of Sindh without any discrimination.

He told the audience that all the decisions were being taken at the IT Ministry with complete transparency with no room for corruption as per the vision of MQM’s leadership.

Karachi’s Administrator assured the IT Minister that the Karachi Metropolitan Corporation would provide all the required facilities for promotion of the IT-related higher education in the city.