Create a mechanism to make Chandigarh a knowledge city:Rodrigues

Chandigarh, Apr 3 (UNI) Punjab Governor and Chandigarh Union Territory Administrator General (Retd) S F Rodrigues today impressed upon the corporate sector to create an efficient mechanism for making Chandigarh a knowledge city.

Inaugurating a seminar on the theme ''Chandigarh: Towards Being a Knowledge City'', organized by the Confederation of Indian Industry Northern Region (CII), here, he said there was a need for enlarging the scope of public-private partnership to reshape and reorient educational programmes with focus on developing new concepts to empower the youth with professional and entrepreneurial skills.

''We have to collectively work to change the mindset of our people, create an environment to strengthen our capacity building processes and for enhancing the application of knowledge based services in diverse fields'', he said.

General Rodrigues said that universities and higher education institutions must rejuvenate teaching processes with the focus on innovative, technology-based and job-oriented education to enable boys and girls to broaden their vision and competence. Referring to a large number of engineering graduates passing out from Indian universities every year with little scope of absorption in top companies, he said that ''we have to re-work our strategies and improve the education curriculum in different disciplines, matching global standards''.

Stressing the need for a constant review and periodical upgradation of educational policies and missions, General Rodrigues said ''by doing so we can identify our shortcomings and inadequacies and plug loopholes for the smooth and speedy development of our education system''.

The Chandigarh Administration had already initiated the process of setting up an education city and 26 companies had been short-listed out of 69 applications received for pre-qualification bids, he said.

The aim of this education city is to increase knowledge skills by integrating diverse services and strategies and making the city a center of excellence in different specialized fields to contribute to ''Resurgent India''.

UNI