The University of Agriculture, Faisalabad Finance and Planning Committee on Saturday approved Rs 9109.290 million university budget for the financial year 2016-17.

The University of Agriculture, Faisalabad Finance and Planning Committee on Saturday approved Rs 9109.290 million university budget for the financial year 2016-17. The 73rd meeting of committee was chaired by UAF Vice Chancellor Prof Dr Iqrar Ahmad Khan at Syndicate Room in which Treasurer Umer Saeed Qadri presented the budget before the house. The meeting approved the non-development budget worth Rs 4113.208 million; Development Budget (federal government funded) worth Rs 1479.506; Development Budget (Punjab Government funded) worth Rs. 934.710; Water Management Research Centre worth Rs 32.352 million and Competitive Research Grant worth Rs. 2,549.51 million The meeting was attended by Higher Education Commission DG Finance Zaigham Ali, Deputy Secretary ( Planning) Agriculture Department Naeem Khalid, UAF Registrar Muhammad Hussain, FDA Deputy Director Ejaz Akhtar, UAF Dean Food Sciences Dr Masood Sadiq Butt, Academic Staff Association President Amir Saeed Rana, Dr. Zahir Ahmad Zahir and Dr. Tahira Iqbal,. Addressing the participants, Vice Chancellor Prof. Dr. Iqrar Ahmad Khan said that during the current academic session, Rs 200 million scholarships have been disbursed among 4500 students in order to support the deserving students to continue their journey of education. He said that on the directives of Government, the University gives the free education to the people of Baluchistan and special people also. Dr. Iqrar A. Khan said 425 competitive research projects of 2549.51 million rupees were in progress that speaks the volume of the quality work of the faculty. He thanked the federal and provincial government for providing the funds and the steps to strengthen the education sector. He said that the varsity has touched the highest performance parameters in the country as during the current year, best scientist and best research paper award was given to our faculty. He said that the varsity is paying 449 million rupees on the salaries of the TTS faculty, that seems to be increased in the days to come as a huge number of the fresh PhDs are been recruited on TTS. He told the house that South Korea is going to set up a Technology Park at campus with a huge investment of $ 30 million. He expressed his reservations on rising student-teacher ratio and wowed to make new recruitments to narrow down the ratio to an ideal of 1/20 in the coming months.