ISLAMABAD: President Dr Arif Alvi called upon youth and fresh graduates who were about to enter their professional lives to play their productive role in country's exponential growth.

He said country at this stage, badly needed exponential growth rather than linear growth as it was already far behind region in many sectors including education.

President Alvi said Holy Prophet (PBUH) always taught for seeking knowledge, good training and love for humankind. Congratulating successful candidates on getting degrees, he said they had now become elites of country as around 28 million or 40 percent children were still out of schools in country.

President said most beautiful culture of this country was joint family system that symbolised love in society. Only thing that overseas Pakistanis miss during their stay abroad was love and family culture of their homeland, he added.

Addressing 26th Convocation ceremony of COMSATS University here, he believed that if students in their professional lives, ensure justice in society, contribute productively in country's development and learn to share their resources with poor, country would see new heights of prosperity and development.

Today, he said Artificial Intelligence or Computer Science was second leg of every profession.

"World is running very fast so we must have to run with same pace as world do." Otherwise, he said country would lag further behind region and world.

President said world was growing exponentially, however Pakistan's growth pace was relatively slower in region. He said 9 percent of total intermediate students manage to get admissions in higher education while in region, ratio was over 25 percent. Universities should increase enrollments of students to achieve exponential growth in country, he added. He maintained lack of timely decision was one of major reason behind slow growth.

We lacked vision for example, he said, adding we could not foresee electricity requirement before time and when time came, we took emergency decision to install power plants that cost much higher.

He said neighbouring country India announced data policy in 2012 while Pakistan announced it after decade in 2022 and that too due to his personal efforts.

During ceremony, President gave away medals to top position holders and conferred degrees to successful students in various departments of University.

Published in The Daily National Courier, November, 03 2023

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