By Uzma Zafar
ISLAMABAD: President Dr. Arif Alvi on Monday stressed the transforming of existing cities into smart cities to improve the governance as well as well-being of the people. Chairing a meeting on Smart Cities Programme at the Aiwan-e-Sadr, the emphasized the need to deploy smart technologies in all cities of the country, ensuring safety, security and overall optimum quality of life for all citizens. The meeting was attended by Minister for Science and Technology Chaudhary Fawad Hussain, Secretary Science & Technology Arshad Mehmood, Chairman Higher Education Commission Dr. Tariq Banuri and other IT experts from NUST and COMSATS.
President Alvi underscored that it was essential to utilize artificial intelligence and other related technologies to introduce data-driven algorithms into governance, education, energy, industry, infrastructure, healthcare, mobility and other aspects that directly contributed to improve the lives of the citizens.
He said the digital revolution was offering an unprecedented window of opportunity to improve the lives of millions of urban residents and deliver more efficient, sustainable and inclusive urban services to the citizens. A detailed presentation by the Ministry of Science and Technology highlighted the advantages of Smart Cities Technologies that provided smart solutions to governance, healthcare, infrastructure, crime control, transportation, waste management, cyber security and mobility.
The Ministry informed that a team of experts had been constituted to lead the smart cities initiatives. The meeting was briefed about the key products of National Centres which had been established by Higher Education Commission to focus on research and development in the specialized domains.
The products, prepared by the National Centres, will help in efficiently managing transport, detecting crimes and investigating cyber crimes. It was also apprised that the Government of Nigeria had lauded the efforts of National Radio Telecommunication Corporation (NRTC) for providing state-of-the-art counter-terrorism equipment.
Earlier, President Arif Alvi during his visit to the Quaid e Azam Academy here on Wednesday sought digitalization of all its rare manuscripts ensuring easy accessibility of these to the scholars and researchers in the years to come.
He on the occasion acknowledged that the center established with the objective to conduct a holistic research on Quaid e Azam and his associates in carving out a separate homeland for the Muslims of Sub-Continent was indeed a significant platform for archiving national history with due focus on research, publication and projection of the cultural, social, political and economic aspects of the history of Pakistan.
The President paid glowing tributes to Prof. Sharif ul Mujahid, the first director of the academy followed by other scholars who headed the Quaid e Azam Academy , Karachi in different years and played important role in turning it into a robust research cum publication center since 1976. Consequent to a briefing given to him by Mohammad Arif, Secretary, Quaid e Azam Mazar Management Board with additional charge of Director, Quaid e Azam Academy, President Alvi observed that current pace of its research work needed to be expedited.
He was informed that besides the post of QAA Director itself (lying vacant since December 2019), no replacement against the positions for two senior research fellows, four research fellows and one librarian could be made , for quite sometime. President Arif Alvi was further informed that QAA – Karachi has submitted its proposals to the National Heritage and Culture Division, Ministry of Education for establishment of “Heritage Corner”, digitalization of speeches, statements and interviews of Quaid e Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah as the Governor General, digitalization of books and other relevant material besides production of audible version of the nation’s voice.
