THE caretaker prime minister is reported to have chaired a meeting of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) recently in which he directed the commission to submit a report on state-funded scholarships while asking to expand scholarships for science and technology.

The very mention of the prime minister chairing an HEC meeting initially raised my expectations and of thousands of others with scarce resources who are virtually hand-tomouth and whose children wish to seek university education.

All such people have been left to suffer acute mental agony after the Ehsas scholarship was abruptly discontinued in April last year. The said scholarship, as far as one knows, was a state-funded programme meant for those who did not have enough means to afford university education.

Owing to the discontinuation of the scholarship, I am among the thousands of people who have been affected.

Having limited financial resources due to a crisis, I cannot afford even normal schooling of my children. It was just because of this facility that my daughter was about to complete her university education. I must mention that my son had earlier graduated from a college purely through scholarship, and we never had to pay a single penny in fee.

Now I am feeling the heat. My son, being a brilliant student, wants to pursue his studies at a university, and so far I have been able to offer him consolation and false promises. I am having restless nights while thinking about ways out of my tight spot.

As I went through the details of the media coverage related to the interim prime minister`s meeting at the HEC, my hopes vanished, as there was no mention of the scholarship fiasco.

The HEC simply did not have the guts to point out the matter to the prime minister, and the latter, of course, had no time to explore anything beyond the immediate agenda of the meeting.

Amjad Hussain Attock