11-26-2008, 11:20 AM
<b>Research in IT institutes</b>
The information technology industry in Pakistan began to nourish in late eighties, when some of the top universities offered some courses and diplomas in computer science. <b>Since then, it made little progress in catering to some of the software related needs for business and strategic issues.</b>
From 1998 to 2005-6, due to the personal interest of the then president Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Dr Ata-ur-Rehman, many IT related institutes were initiated and some new IT parks established. The prime goal of these IT universities was to provide trained IT recruits to the developing IT industry which depended on western technology resources (like data entry and business software) for its business gain and was a weak rival for giant Indian IT hubs.
<b>Since then, the aim of both the government and IT institutes has been to produce a handsome amount of these IT recruits for the IT industry whose volume never increased because its main focus was to get business from the west which had already diverted to the rival Indian side mainly because of terrorism and lack of research.
<span style='font-size:14pt;line-height:100%'>Now, as a result, Pakistan is producing more and more educated jobless persons in the IT sector every year.</span></b> <!--emo&:flush--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/Flush.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='Flush.gif' /><!--endemo-->
Research is the key factor, which was ignored by these so called IT institutes producing computer users rather than trained self dependent IT professionals.
Once we start developing research based softwares that could be used in the various fields like defense, jet planes, automated vehicles industry, medical science, computer networks etc; only then can Pakistanâs IT industry be made self reliant and more lucrative.
<b>JAMAL AHMAD KHAN
Jhang</b>
Cheers <!--emo&:beer--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/cheers.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='cheers.gif' /><!--endemo-->