President Dr Arif Alvi has urged the student delegation from Balochistan to continue to gain knowledge and acquire marketable skills by tapping traditional and online resources of knowledge, and using the acquired knowledge to serve the country and its people with compassion and observing moral and ethical values. He added that quality leadership, timely decisions, learning from the past, benchmarking the best and proven practices, and overcoming issues and crises by setting KPIs would help the country to overcome its financial and economic issues. The President expressed these views while talking to the students and staff of the Cadet College, Killa Saifullah, who called on him, at Aiwan-e-Sadr, today. Talking to the students, the President said that knowledge and continuous learning were very important to build a comprehensive, well-groomed and balanced personality, however, observance of morals and ethical values, care for elders, love for the young ones, developing compassion and sympathy for the less fortunate and exploring out-of-the-box solutions to existing and emerging issues were also required to build a healthy and prosperous society. The President said that Pakistan had great potential in terms of both its natural and human resources. He said that Pakistan created a nuclear deterrent in a short period to counter the hugely disproportional conventional weapons of our neighbour and created a much-needed peace in the region. He said that we also succeeded in defeating the scourge of terrorism from our country, which no other nation even a superpower could not achieve with desired outcomes. He said that we also hosted 4 million Afghan refugees, who had to leave their country due to war and violence for 40 years. The President said that problems faced by the nation could be resolved by self-discipline, virtues of humbleness, modesty and simplicity, avoiding arrogance, egoism and developing and maintaining human relation connections relations imbibed with ethical and moral values, and curbing backbiting, and desisting from spread of fake and unverified news, which were essential to develop a healthy society. He said that tangible and time-bound steps needed to be taken to bring 22 million out-of-school children into schools, besides ensuring the inclusion of 10% differently-abled population (DAPs) into the mainstream as useful and productive citizens. The President said that Pakistan was blessed with a vast coastline but unfortunately our exports of fisheries and related products were low compared to other countries. He said that preserving sea life and the ecosystem, using better nets, and ensuring that sea resources were used in a scientific and sustainable manner, would not only increase our exports but also help in earning sustainable income for the people of coastal areas. The President said that the stakeholders in the higher education system should make tangible efforts to increase the number of students enrolled in higher institutions as currently, only 9% of our students had access to higher education compared to 20 to 25% in our neighbouring countries. This, he said, was one of the factors hampering the progress of our country as compared to other countries in the region. The President also called upon the college management to train cadets in new technology trends like the Internet of Things, Robotics, Virtual Reality and Artificial Intelligence, which were going to have vast applications in in every sphere of life. The establishment of Cadet College Killa Saifullah was announced on 18th December 2004. The College became functional on 17th April 2009. The College’s 90 seats are given to the students from the Province of Balochistan with a token representation of other provinces.
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