Federal Minister for Science and Technology Fawad Hussain Chaudhry has said that the government is fully cognizant of the importance of the agriculture sector for micro-economic development and working on introducing agriculture drones to enhance crop production.
Addressing at the convocation of the Capital University for Science and Technology (CUST) at the Convention Centre in Islamabad, he termed the research and development as pivotal for economic stability and said that Pakistan is the fourth country which is focusing on research and development diligently.
He said that Prime Minister Imran Khan is focusing on the development of science and technology and the budgetary allocations for this sector would be substantially increased in the future. The science and technology budget is increased 600 times in the last eight months and the government intends to further increase the budget up to 1500 times through public-private partnerships.
The minister said that youth comprises 60 percent of the total population and “we can achieve excellent results if we had focused on providing them quality science education.” In Pakistan, the science and technology sector was not given due importance in the past which resulted in a lack of progress in this field.
MOBILE TECHNOLOGY: He said that the government is paying special attention to this sector through promoting science and innovation and creating job opportunities for engineers and scientists. He termed the knowledge of social sciences as equally important as science and technology. He said that the reaction to the statement about sending space mission in 2022 reflected that they were lagging behind in science and technology.
China and India were not involved in any space program at that time when SPARCO was established in Pakistan. In the ’90s, Pakistan was the only country in South Asia where mobile technology was introduced. He said that Pakistan lost its focus on development after involvement in the Afghan war.
