DNA

ISLAMABAD, DEC 1 – The Aga Khan University Examination Board (AKU-EB) and Knowledge Platform (KP), a leading ed-tech organization in Pakistan, have developed a strategic alliance to find new ways to address the learning crisis and bring about a set of solutions previously considered difficult or impossible to implement.

The innovative online platform will provide a robust holistic digital teaching, learning, and assessment opportunities for AKU-EB-affiliated schools in Pakistan. This platform offers high-quality digital learning systems that prepare students of grades 6 to 12 to continue their learning online with the flexibility of time, place and pace of learning. Moreover, students will have access to high-quality assessment content enabling them to prepare for AKU-EB’s high-stakes examinations.

This would also facilitate students to be self-directed learners. Student learning will be independent of the varied teaching quality across affiliated schools and private tuitions, which is an additional cost for parents.Knowledge Platform is already working with 280,000+ students and 800+ schools across Pakistan. Mahboob Mahmood, the founder of Knowledge Platform noted: “We are honored and delighted to craft an alliance with AKU-EB. Their premier examination preparation content, when combined with our Grade 1-10 content library of videos, games and assessments, provides a high-quality and extensive education program for national curriculum students.

We are keen to collaborate with AKU-EB and their affiliated schools in their march towards responsive, intelligent 21st century education. Cross-capability alliances such as the one between AKU-EB and Knowledge Platform are essential to leveraging the capabilities of education technology to transform education in Pakistan.According to the director AKU-EB, Dr Shehzad Jeeva, “Partnering with KP to provide an excellent solution to our schools will help to achieve our objectives of being school-centered.

The COVID-19 crisis has further compelled the need for an online solution and the urgency for implementation to support affiliated schools and students for the upcoming academic year. Historically, AKU-EB has always supported its affiliated schools with a mission to eliminate the rote-learning culture and in these unprecedented times, schools expect similar support from us.”

DNA

Islamabad —December 01: ChildLife Foundation (ChildLife) has selected Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) to support its third party hospital management system application. As a result, ChildLife has significantly increased the utilization of the application by improving its availability and performance, at a reduced cost. This is helping it direct the maximum amount of funding and resource towards achieving its mission: providing quality and free-of-cost emergency healthcare to every child in Pakistan.

ChildLife operates in 21 hospitals with 10 state-of-the-art, model emergency rooms in all public-teaching hospitals across Sindh and Baluchistan provinces and 11 telemedicine satellite centers serving far-flung areas, providing services that typically help save one million lives annually. ChildLife has been expanding its operations exponentially since its inception in 2010.  To continue this, it needed a stable, secure and scalable platform to underpin its hospital management information system and support this ongoing growth.

“Preventable deaths claim the lives of hundreds of children annually in Pakistan, with pneumonia alone killing 92,000 children annually. Our aim is to save as many of them as possible by making rapid access to free-of-cost and quality emergency medical care possible across the country,” said Dr. Ahson Rabbani, CEO – ChildLife Foundation. “Knowing that our hospital management system application is running on a reliable, performant and secure cloud like Oracle Cloud, gives us peace of mind and allows us to ensure that the majority of our funding goes towards delivering an efficient healthcare system.”

ChildLife has made significant savings by deploying Oracle Cloud Infrastructure to help it future-proof its IT infrastructure, instead of upgrading its on-premises solution. Additionally, Oracle Cloud will help deliver the performance and scalability needed to run demanding workloads and maximize the availability of data and applications, as well as provide a disaster recovery site.

“Transforming the future of healthcare can be achieved by leveraging the latest technology to deliver high-quality patient care at a reduced cost. While this is true globally, it specifically applies to a country like Pakistan, where resources are limited,” said Amer Khan, Senior Sales Director, Technology Business, Oracle Pakistan. “We are delighted to help ChildLife Foundation build a reliable and highly available healthcare platform using Oracle’s cloud offerings that will help provide patient-centered, value-based care, enabling the foundation to continue to expand its healthcare network without worrying about the security, scalability and performance issues.”

The contract was awarded to Oracle in August earlier this year and went live in October 2020.

DNA

ISLAMABAD, DEC 1 – The fifth Meeting of the Joint Working Group on Gwadar was held through a video link, Gwadar Pro reported on Tuesday.

The meeting reviewed the progress of projects in Gwadar. Both sides expressed satisfaction over the progress made in port development and the Chinese side appreciated the support provided by Pakistan in the port operationalization, particularly enabling the Afghan transit trade through Gwadar.

The meeting was co-chaired by Secretary Ministry of Planning, Development and Special Initiatives (PD&SI) Mathar Niaz Rana from the Pakistan side and Director General, National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) Ying Xiong, from the Chinese side.

In his opening remarks, Director General, NDRC said that the development of the Gwadar was a priority and will be pushed forward with vigor and zeal. The Secretary, PD&SI acknowledged the continuous support extended by the Chinese government for the development of Gwadar and assured the Chinese side of Pakistan’s unwavering commitment to accelerate the development projects in Gwadar.

It was agreed that this step would greatly reduce the logistical cost and facilitate the transshipment trade.

The Chairman, CoPHCL explained the development of the port in detail and highlighted renewed interest of the entrepreneurs in investing in Gwadar port and Free Zone area.

It was informed that the Eastbay Expressway will be completed in 2021 and all pending issues have been resolved on priority.

The Expressway will connect the port with the 2nd Phase of the Free Trade Zone (FTZ) which will facilitate the business climate of the zone and the port alike.

Other projects discussed included New Gwadar International Airport (NGIA) and M-8 Motorway for seamless connectivity of Gwadar with the rest of the country and beyond. The progress on the NGIA was noted with satisfaction.

The Chinese side appreciated progress on the Energy Project in Gwadar. The Power Purchase Agreement of 300 MW Coal Power Project was made as a deliverable for the forthcoming 10th JCC.

The project, upon completion, will energize the industry in Gwadar and will improve the social and economic well-being of the local community.

Other projects in the social sector discussed during the meeting include Pak-China Friendship Hospital in Gwadar and Vocational & Technical Institute in Gwadar.

The Secretary, MoPD&SI highlighted that the hospital project is of vital importance for the people of Gwadar and needs to be expedited.

The Secretary suggested to expedite work for timely completion of the project. For the Vocational & Technical Institute, both sides agreed to push ahead to create job opportunities for the youth.

For the development of Gwadar as a smart port city, it was reiterated that the provision of fresh water is of utmost importance. In this regard, the 1.2 MGD Desalination plant project was termed critical. Both sides agreed to take the necessary measures to complete the project in time.

The dredging of Berthing Areas is important for large vessels to access the Gwadar port which will improve the operation of the port. For the construction of Breakwater, the timely completion of the project was stressed as a crucial intervention required for the fishermen community in Gwadar.

The Secretary, PD&SI proposed to divide the project into two phases for better implementation of the project. DG, NDRC replied in affirmative and appreciated the idea.

The Secretary PD&SI also appreciated the projects under Corporate Social Responsibility including Fraternity Emergency Care Centre of the Red Crescent Society of China, Pak-China Faqeer Colony School and other initiatives of the China Overseas Port Holding Company.

At the end, the Secretary, PD&SI apprised about other social sector development projects, being undertaken by the government of Pakistan under the Prime Minister’s development package for South Balochistan.

The Director General, NDRC applauded the development package and reiterated China’s full support for the socio-economic well-being of the region.

The meeting was concluded with signing of the minutes along with finalization of the agreed deliverables of the JWG on Gwadar for the forthcoming 10th JCC.

The meeting was also attended by other senior officials of the ministry of PD&SI, representatives of the Government of Balochistan, Civil Aviation Authority, Board of Investment, and Ministry of Maritime Affairs amongst others.

Karachi (DNA) Mian Anjum Nisar, President of the Federation of Pakistan Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FPCCI) has appointed Masood Alam Rizvi as the Secretary General of the organization with effect from the 1^st of December, 2020 in accordance with rules and procedures laid out in Trade Organization Ordinance of Pakistan.

Mr. Masood Alam Rizvi has a long experience of serving both in the public and private sectors.  Starting his carrier as Assistant Commissioner and rising up to the level of Federal Secretary.  After retirement he served in the private sector including his two – year stint at the FPCCI.

During his carrier as a civil servant he held assignments relating to Trade and Commerce which included Vice Chairman, Export Promotion Bureau (now Trade Development Authority of Pakistan  – TDAP), Chairman, Trading Corporation of Pakistan (TCP) and Federal Secretary, Textile Industry.  In these assignments he had lot of interaction with business, trade and commerce community.  He has a fair understanding of their issues.

DNA

ISLAMABAD – Subsequent to critical visit of honorable Prime Minister of Pakistan to Afghanistan to deliberate upon finalization of shared vision document with his counterpart focusing intensively on strengthening bilateral state to state relations, long-term peace in Afghanistan, enforcing against terrorism for ensuring overall security regime and regional connectivity in terms of consolidating bilateral trade, transit & investment regime, a hi-level delegation of private stakeholders under leadership of PAJCCI Chairman Zubair Motiwala called upon H.E. Umer Daudzai, Special Envoy for Pakistan to President of Afghanistan to discuss matters of mutual interest.

Honorable Daudzai shed light on the significance of consolidation of shared vision during the recent Pakistan Premier visit and established that chemistry between the two leaders was superlative as compared to the past that also resulted in immediate order of release of Pakistani prisoners detained in Afghanistan as a sign of positive gesture. He lauded the role of Pakistan Afghanistan Joint Chamber of Commerce & Industry (PAJCCI) as the joint body for voicing concerns of private stakeholders effectively across the border and iterated that all future economic interactions must have the optimum engagement of PAJCCI for attaining constructive results and long-term solutions to the economic hindrances.

Motiwala welcomed the new visa regime announced for Afghanistan by Pakistan after the visit of H.E. Abdullah Abdullah and hoped for the reciprocity. He staunchly believed that the results of these meetings will surely bring the positive outlook and strategic framework will be developed on an urgent basis to help stakeholders recover from the resulting devastating effects. He mentioned that Afghanistan is the only country with which Pakistan enjoys trade surplus and this trust deficit will critically affect economy of Pakistan more than Afghanistan, hence these issues must be sorted out on priority basis as Pakistan’s efforts in reaping potential benefits in Central Asia can only be substaintiated by prioritizing resolution of Af-Pak trade and transit issues. He also mentioned that the proposed draft on both APTTA and PTA was developed by PAJCCI across the border and have been submitted across the border to relevant ministries and presented the same to the Special Envoy. Additionally, he also tabled issues faced by Pakistani businesses across the border specially in exporting to Central Asian countries via Afghanistan that also needs immediate resolution. He specifically sought the support of the Afghan Government in facilitating Pakistan to import cotton from Uzbekistan, keeping in view shortage of raw material in Pakistan at the moment, and requested that it should be put under “free list of customs” as the said material has no use in Afghanistan and will not have any repercussions thereof. Further he acknowledged that Pakistan should provide as much leverage to Afghanistan as possible under new PTA regime but as an interchange Afghanistan should at least give preferential treatment to Pakistan in contrast to other regional players and conducive policies may be devised for Pakistani investors to penetrate the market for mutually beneficial outcomes.

Daudzai assured that new visa regime for Pakistan is underway and will soon be announced and envisioned that with engagement of PAJCCI the newly signed APTTA and PTA will bring colossal results for the business communities of both the countries.

During the visit, PAJCCI also organized its fourth focus group discussion whereby private businesses from Pakistan deliberated with public officials in Afghanistan from Ministry of Commerce, Harakat, Customs, Transport and leadership of apex and other regional chambers. The members unanimously reiterated the significance of national sanctity and security and supported all measures that respective Governments may take to ensure the same. However, the same may not be continued at the beset of hurting the economic and social ties across the border resulting in massive monetary losses and trust deficit. Zubair Motiwala put forth issues faced by Pakistani businesses specifically pertinent to stuck containers at Afghan side of Torkham due to infrastructural issues, delayed operationalization of newly added border  crossings at Afghan side, absence of quality assurance and control mechanisms whilst importing perishable goods from Afghanistan, undue delays and illicit charges on Pakistani trucks carrying exports intended for CAS, difficulties in importing cotton from Uzbekistan, 110% guarantee of custom duties charged on Pakistani exports to CAS were major highlights.

Khan Jan Alokozai, Co-Chairman PAJCCI, acknowledged role played by Zubair Motiwala on behalf of business community of Afghanistan and mentioned submission of 21 point items to Ministry of Commerce Pakistan for immediate resolution. He also suggested to constitute a 6 member committee, comprising 3 members from each chapter of PAJCCI, to deal with the respective Governments on pertinent matters for prompt resolution. This committee would act as economic and confidence building catalyst to ensure further enhancement of bilateral trade, rejuvenate regional linkages, promote joint investments.

Chairman PAJCCI iterated that both Pakistan and Afghanistan have all the potential resources to attain economic sustainability, however until the jointly supportive policies are ensured, businesses from both the countries will be at the loss and other players will utilize the untapped opportunities. He urged that apart from bilateral trade and transit, the lucrative investment regime may be announced to add value to the potentials of both the countries.

The delegation also met H.E. Mansoor Ahmad Khan, Ambassador Pakistan in Afghanistan, Women Chamber in Afghanistan, leadership of the newly formed Federation of Commerce in Afghanistan and also launched its business portal to the businesses of Afghanistan (www.businessportal.pajcci.com) as a digital platform for mutual connectivity and engagement.