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‘KCCI eyeing SMIC for car parking facility’

Staff Report

KARACHI: The administration of federal government-run historical Sindh Madressatul Islam College (SMIC) has expressed serious reservations over Karachi Chamber of Commerce and Industry (KCCI)’s move to adopt the institution for promoting education.

“The KCCI, which is located just opposite the SMIC on Nicol Road, needs spacious ground and historic buildings for its car parking purpose and extension of its offices,” said an SMIC spokesperson on Wednesday in a statement, which was issued in response to KCCI’s application to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani that sought government’s permission for adopting SMIC.

The SMIC spokesperson said if the KCCI was really interested to play any role in the province’s education sector or other parts of the country, they should first reopen 1,300 closed schools in the country, among which 700 were in Sindh alone. He added that the KCCI could open new institutions in the rural areas of the city “rather than trying to deface the historic institution of the country by trying to covert it into a commercial complex.”

He also said it was then prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto who had put SMIC under the control of the federal education ministry in 1974 by taking it from the Sindh government, as SMIC was considered a national heritage. “Keeping that in view, the present PPP government should not consider the idea of giving the control of this historic institution to a commercial organisation,” he added.

He further said the management of the institution was trying to get university status for SMIC. On the other hand, according to SMIC faculty members, if Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah’s alma mater was commercialised, they would protest against it, he added.

They have also appealed President Asif Ali Zardari and the PM to take notice of this move that is against the historic institution of the country.

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