Government College University (GCU) Lahore’s Vice-Chancellor Prof Dr Asghar Zaidi has been assigned additional charge of Vice-Chancellor of the University of Punjab (PU) for a period of three months or till the appointment of a regular incumbent. In this regard, a notification has been issued by the Higher Education Department (HED) Punjab. After the issuance of the notification, Prof Dr Asghar Zaidi assumed the charge of PU VC.
In his message, Prof Dr Asghar Zaidi said that PU was an excellent educational institution with a glorious past and traditions and it is an honor for him to be appointed as the Vice-Chancellor of one of the oldest universities of the Subcontinent. He said that the Government of Punjab had given him the responsibility of the administrative affairs of Punjab University for which I thanked the government for this trust and he would try to fulfill this responsibility as well in a good way.
He said that his first priority was to solve all the problems related to the teachers, employees and students of Punjab University, which they are facing due to the absence of the Vice-Chancellor in the last few days. He said that he would play his due role for further development of Punjab University.
He said that he would make strong efforts to further improve the quality of education and lay the foundation of such initiatives which would improve the global ranking of the university further. He said that all affairs of Punjab University would be run in accordance with the rules and regulations. He said that collective efforts would be made in making Punjab University one of the top educational institutions in the world.
Professor Zaidi, who holds a PhD in economics from the world’s top university, University of Oxford, is a social policy analyst and renowned researcher. He holds vast experiences of working and teaching at the world’s top universities around the world and would wish to bring this experience towards improvements in higher education in Pakistan.
Asghar Zaidi’s reward was attributed to his international research works on population aging, on older people and people with disabilities. Last year, the Government of Shanghai also awarded him the 1,000 Foreign Experts Scholarship in 2019. He was awarded Tamgha-i-Imtiaz in 2019 for his meritorious contributions in the field of research and education, especially attributing to his innovative research on population ageing. Working along the lines of the Human Development Index of Dr Mahbub ul Haq, Prof Zaidi developed two global indexes, namely Global Age Watch Index and Active Ageing Index.
These indexes provided insights in studying the well-being of older populations around the world. His contributions are also recognized for the first of its kind study of dementia experiences in Pakistan with Alzheimer’s Pakistan and in developing a nation-wide survey of human rights of the older population for British Council Islamabad.
