302 Pak students not paid stipend in China since April

LAHORE -Pakistani students, studying in China under the Cultural Exchange Scholarship Programme of the federal government, are finding themselves stranded as they have not been receiving their monthly stipend for almost nine months.

At present, over 300 Pakistani students are enrolled in various Chinese universities and institutes of higher education for masters and doctoral degrees in various fields, including engineering, sciences, medicine and social sciences.

In an email to this correspondent, some students mentioned plight of the Pakistani students, saying the delay in monthly stipend was creating problems for them. The students said they were scrutinised from across the country through a testing process to get the ‘Cultural Exchange Scholarship’ for higher studies and they were also entitled to get the per month stipend of US $200 for masters and US $300 for doctoral programmes. They said the monthly stipend was stopped without any intimation from April 2009 and despite repeated attempts, they were unable to have a clear picture of the whole situation.

“But for the last intake, September 2009 onwards, it was announced that we were entitled to get US $ 300 and US $ 400 per month according the revised project,” they said, adding: “However, the announcement has been materialized.” The students said that despite repeated attempts, they never received a satisfactory answer from the Ministry of Education, adding people at Pakistani Embassy in China were so “cooperative” that they never bothered to receive the phone calls and ‘by chance when they receive they utter the same words which we anticipate before calling them.’

“We, Pakistani students envy other students of different countries who get the stipends from their respective countries smoothly and on time,” commented Mudassar Shah, a student of Journalism and Information Communication at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China. Khalid Khan, a PhD candidate at the Chemistry Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China, and Zahoor Ahmed from the Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, said most of the students belonged to middle class families and many of them were even married. “We cannot ask for our monthly spending from our families back in our country,” they said, adding: “Although our prime duty is research but most of the time we have to cope with financial matters that deal with our daily food and clothing.”

“It may be astonishing for you to know that few of us even take one time meal in a day to survive the life,” they added.

“Particularly during winter, China experiences the worst cold and temperature goes -10, so we think hundreds of times before buying warm clothes to protect ourselves,” commented Mudassar Shah.

He said it was compulsory for doctoral degree candidates to publish or present their scientific research work in esteemed and scholarly conferences and journals but unfortunately, the financial constraints did not allow him and his fellows to fulfill the basic requirements of the doctoral degree.

The Pakistani students have also appealed to President Asif Ali Zardari, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry to take notice of the situation and provide them relief.

Talking to The News, Muzaffar Aman Zia, Deputy Education Advisor from the Ministry of Education, said the delay was partly because of approval process of the revised project under which the amount of stipend had been increased. He said the ministry was trying hard to get the required funds released, adding that the ministry had to receive funds for this particular project from the Higher Education Commission (HEC). He said the last batch, sent to China, was informed that they might face delay in connection with the stipend. He, however, said the stipend problem had started from July 2009, adding that a total of 302 Pakistani students were enrolled in institutes of China at present.

When contacted, HEC Executive Director Dr Sohail H Naqvi said the revision of the project took time owing to which the students had to face the delay. He said so far the HEC had received only 30 percent of the development funds, adding as soon as the funds were released the students studying on scholarships abroad would be the priority.

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