News Update Times

Lahore (Muhammad Yasir) Voluntary Service Overseas (VSO) organized a three-day training workshop titled “Volunteers` Social media training for effective awareness campaigns” in Lahore. VSO core objective for its skills training program is to equip and build the capacity of Pakistani youth with modern social media tools and techniques for digital advocacy on Global Sustainable Development Goals like Education, Social Cohesion, Gender Equality, and Climate Change.

“This is the Fourth training of this year, and 10 more similar training workshops are planned for Pakistani youth in Sindh and Punjab”, said Muhammad Bilal – Project Delivery Officer VSO during his address to the participants, he further said that “VSO has been working in Pakistan since 1987, building healthy communities and supporting people to develop sustainable and resilient livelihoods. VSO has launched a social media awareness campaign named ‘AWAL INSAAN’ to spread awareness around the social issue on quality education, social cohesion, and gender equality while building a stronger, positive image of the country and youth role in development.”

Twenty-Five participants attended this training workshop from Lahore, in the concluding discussion of the workshop participants were confident to utilize training knowledge and learnings in the social development of their respective communities and bring constructive change through digital campaigns.

The training workshop was moderated by Skill Gains where Nadeem Sohail was the trainer of the workshop. Trainer emphasized on the importance of digital advocacy particularly during and after the COVID-19 pandemic worldwide. According to the trainer mentioned statistics, social media is cost-effective for various enterprises, social projects, and the non-profit sector of Pakistan for creating awareness, generating livelihood, and ensuring education.

During the three-day training workshop, interactive sessions, in-person group activities, networking, and mock exercises were also carried out to brainstorm modern trends of digital communications. 

Islamabad (Muhammad Yasir) The National Incubation Center Islamabad proudly hosts Huawei Cloud Connect launch 2021. The purpose of this event was to address the need of Cloudification for the 4th industrial revolution.

An esteemed panel of profound industry experts joined the event to discuss the challenges and opportunities for start ups with cloudification. The panelists included Shaukat Ali – Managing Partner PSEB, Hank Shao – Managing Director, Huawei Cloud Business, Aiman Khan – CEO, SLOSH AI Solutions, Abdul Rahim Ahmed – Chief Information Officer, Special Technology Zones Authority (STZA). The participants and Panelists were welcomed by Parvez Abbasi, Project Director, NIC.

“NIC ‘s vision is to help young people in startups and business development which is not possible without private intervention. NIC welcomes Huawei and hopes to build a relation with startups in terms of IT and communication” — Parvez Abbasi-Project Director The panel discussed the potential and opportunities that cloud services have to offer. As a startup, investing in hardware is not an option in most cases. Cloud is a natural choice, to facilitate startups. Huawei is introducing cloud connect as a CSR, to invest back in the society and for uplifting the society technology wise.

Mr. Hank Shao elaborates that cloud connect is an innovation that helps startups to focus on their business. During this booming era of software industry and entrepreneur, the business needs to reach customers as soon as possible. Cloud connect provides a new pool of customers and services without any boundaries to its users.

SLOSH being a health-Tech startup in Pakistan, brought attention to the challenges faced by IT or digital innovators in Pakistan as there is no direct representation to resolve issues in real time. As well as trainings for the cloudification of startups. To which Huawei Cloud Connect can now act as a provider.

“These facilities, incubation centers all over Pakistan are playing a tremendous role in building a knowledge based economy. Such initiatives are the only way to create jobs and move forward with the legacy thinking we have in mind”– Shahzad Rasheed, CEO, Huawei cloud Pakistan Mr. Shaukat Ali -CTO-PSEB, explained how Pakistan has recently signed six cloud services to create a platform where any IT company can get services in affordable prices. He also discussed lack of awareness on potential of cloud services and arrangement of subsidized training courses for a comprehensive eco systems.

Mr. Farhan Ali, Director Huawei cloud Eco-System & Solutions, shed a light on the global footprint and offering by Huawei spark program for startups. Huawei cloud Spark Program is a global support program. Huawei cloud works with partners, venture capital, and governments to enable startups to help and accelerate their business development. Huawei cloud deals with more than 220 plus services sufficient to a variety of verticals, which gives its users a whole new market to innovate and come up with solutions.

“NIC Islamabad took this initiative to launch Huawei cloud connect, IGNITE is focused on promoting innovation and entrepreneurs in Pakistan. 2021 has been remarkable for Pakistani startups, 376-million-dollar worth of investment came to Pakistan.”—Asim Shehryar-CEO-IGNITE

The event was concluded with distribution of shields as a symbol to strengthen the NIC startup bond with Huawei. NIC is optimistic on its plans for a flourishing ecosystem for entrepreneurs / Startups and Huawei cloud connect will only take this to new heights.

Islamabad (Muhammad Yasir) Educationists and stakeholders at a consultative meeting, while raising reservations over the recently devised single national curriculum (SNC) in the country, have urged the government to review this curriculum by duly incorporating all inputs from stakeholders so that it cater to all diverse communities across the country for better education results.

The consultation meeting was organized by Awaz Foundation Pakistan: Centre for Development Services with the purpose to discuss the government’s recently devised SNC and provide an opportunity to stakeholders to share their concerns as well as recommendations to ensure that this curriculum is made a representative document across the country.

The SNC is believed to be focused on modern education, skills development and technology adopting global trends of education with gender equality and women empowerment.

Officials from Pakistan Coalition for Education, Pakistan Private Schools and College Association, Pakistan Parents Association, Pakistan Teachers Forum, educationists and members of civil society organizations including SAHIL, CRM, GDP, VSO, PAMS, Gain Health, PMHA, PYCA participated in the consultative meeting. Senator and Member Standing Committee on Education, Federal College of Education & Professional Training, Fawzia Arshad also attended the meeting.

In her remarks, Senator Fawzia Arshad appreciated arranging the consultative meeting on this national issue. She assured that the government will extend all support in identifying quick and practical solutions presented by the stakeholders during the consultative meeting.

The lawmaker mentioned that the government has engaged private schools and developed the SNC.

Senator Fawzia urged Awaz Foundation Pakistan: Centre for Development Services and all stakeholders to formulate their recommendations on the SNC for betterment of children, parents, teachers and society to ensure quality education.

She assured to take up these recommendations with the Federal Ministry of Education and Professional Training as well as Prime Minister of Pakistan to adopt a comprehensive SNC.

In his opening remarks, Chief Executive Awaz Foundation Pakistan: Centre for Development Services, Zia-ur-Rehman, explained about the targets and suggested to find the best solutions in real-life adaptation of SNC. He further shared that feedback/ suggestions on SNC are shared with MoFEPT on their feedback portal.

He said that, the meeting is aimed to discuss the solutions and submit the recommendations to the government to ensure uniformity in text books and syllabus for the students from rural and urban areas, private and government schools as well as madaris across the country as Education for all is a fundamental and constitutional right.

Discussing the government’s adopted SNC, the meeting noted that the illustrations in the textbooks should ensure gender based equal representation and contributions of women in leadership roles should be highlighted at par with their male counterparts.

The discussants also suggested that illustrations in textbooks should give reasonable understanding and representation to religious minorities, people living with disability and transgender and without any discriminatory standards of dress code concerning gender.

The recommendations also came out to review text books through psychologists, as it would ensure fulfilment of academic as well as psychological needs of students. The meeting also recommended equal representation of girls, proper translation of curriculum, creating linkages between curriculum and textbooks for better understanding and quality education.

As a solution to all these concerns, they suggested a joint action platform for improvements to move forward with an open-mind approach to formulate a complete and representative curriculum.          

Dr. Shafqat Munir from SDPI drew attention towards defining Nationalism through Single National Curriculum on basis of diversity of culture and not from the Religion as currently being reflected.

Zehra Arshad, National Coordinator Pakistan Coalition for Education empathised the need of quality education so our generation could determine respect between agreements and disagreements. We have split in our educational curriculum, text books that needs to be undone through SNC; she further added.

Marium Amjad, Program Manager AwazCDS-Pakistan appreciated government’s initiative of imparting trainings to teachers to ensure modern and advance education to the children but also stressed to give teachers training on body protection and life skills based education to teach our generation. While AwazCDS-Pakistan demanded Government to expedite the process of teachers training not through zoom but in physical presence as our most of the public and low income school teachers either do not have internet and technology access or tech friendly.

At the end, participants demanded Government to familiarise “Single National Curriculum for compassion with Gender and Inclusive lens”.

Lahore (Muhammad Yasir) CreditPer, a pioneer in digital financial services for individuals and businesses alike, has joined hands with PayPro to provide integrated digital payments with AI-based lending solutions to the Pakistani market. CreditPer is an established lending based Islamic fintech company in Pakistan, with a vision to provide access to fair credit to under- and unserved market segments. They’re the game changers who are providing credit solutions to retailers, farmers and customers nationwide.

PayPro, on the other hand, is a fintech company offering merchant bill aggregation and payments gateway solutions with the largest merchant base in the country, serving both MSME’s as well as large corporations across all business sectors.

CreditPer is all set to provide convenience, flexibility, and payment security to enterprises that aim to increase their customer base through viable lending based financial products. Customers can now simply download the CreditPer app, sign up on it, and buy from available items on easy installments (more product categories are consistently being added to the CreditPer portfolio). They can checkout with an option of paying their total bill later on easy, interest-free installments, through PayPro’s payment gateway. Additionally, as a result of this partnership, invoiced customers of non-ecommerce merchants will also be able to avail BNPL services through PayPro’s interoperable platform.

Speaking on the MoU signing ceremony, Mr. Owais Zaidi, CEO, CreditPer, said, “This initiative is a step towards facilitating Pakistani customers to avail credit options, as well as allowing merchants to book better sales with broader business reach, leading to record sales!”

Mr. Ali Janjua, CEO, PayProadded,“Digital transformation isn’t about any single project, it’s rather about changing the culture and transforming how you create and exchange value with customers or suppliers alike, and we aim to offer our patrons a brand experience that’s worth sharing.”

This partnership will also enable CreditPer to expand their financial product’s accessibility through integrating with PayPro’s successfully marketed payments platform, and enter the mainstream merchant market, to provide better value to merchants, via their extensive experience and position in the industry as pioneers of digital lending through alternate credit scoring.

Lahore (Muhammad Yasir) Special Assistant to Chief Minister Punjab for Information and Spokesperson Punjab Government Hasaan Khawar has said that, introducing progressive thinking of private sector in public sphere, Lahore Central Business District is not just a new project but an innovative and well thought out business model as well. He said that the project, started with just Rs 100 million, has so far generated a humongous investment of Rs. 40 billion, which will gradually increase to Rs. 100 billion by March 2022 and Rs 200 billion by March 2023. He said that, as per the directions of Punjab Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar, the Government was moving towards generating business activities of up to Rs. 2500 billion from this business district. These views were expressed by SACM Hasaan Khawar while talking to media after visiting the site of CBD Prime, the first project of Lahore Central Business District.

Lahore Central Business District CEO Imran Amin, COO Mansoor Janjua, Executive Director Commercial, Executive Director Technical and other senior officials were also present. On this occasion, Spokesperson Government of the Punjab Hasaan Khawar said that previous governments had invested our scarce national resources on infrastructure and other expensive projects without future planning. He stated that the vision of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) under the leadership of Prime Minister Imran Khan was to utilize public sector resources when utmost necessary, to make unused government lands usable and to create new jobs through new businesses and private investment. With this in mind, we are introducing the concepts of urban regeneration and vertical growth in Lahore Central Business District. He further said that after CBD Prime, Central Business District’s master plan includes the first organized Downtown, a digital and a residential city.

On making this project environmental friendly, SACM said that this project includes modern civic initiatives i.e. blue roads, underground traffic system, facilities for pedestrians, smart trees, uninterrupted power supply and internet of things will be introduced. Answering various questions on the occasion, he said if Nawaz Sharif can be given a health card at the airport on his return to Pakistan if he so desires. “We have invested in the private sector through health cards,” he said.

Today the hospitals are showing willingness to be included in our panel so that they can attract business, he said. After taking a presentation in a container, SACM said that the journey started from Imran Khan’s D-Chowk container has reached this development container in Lahore today. We pray that these development containers reach every city and every citizen of Pakistan.

Lahore (Muhammad Yasir) realme is looking to expand its footprint in Pakistan by ushering a new sales-first era in 2022. With expansion in focus, the company has appointed Harvey He as the new Country Manager for Pakistan and joined hands with three leading channel distributors. These strategic developments underscore a new direction for realme, following the local assembly of its smartphones in Pakistan. The three distributors that realme has taken on-board are Airlink Communications (North Region), United Mobile (Central Region) and Muller & Phipps (South Region).

With New Year just around the corner, Harvey He has taken the helm at realme as Country Manager – Pakistan. Harvey brings with himself a stellar sales management experience and has been acquainted with Pakistan since realme set up shop in the country. He is the Head of Sales for realme Pakistan, Bangladesh & Sri Lanka and has now taken the additional charge as Country Manager – Pakistan, thereby bringing his seasoned understanding of the local smartphone industry to the fore.

Being the fastest growing smartphone brand of the country, Pakistan ranks among the top four markets for realme within South Asia. The brand went on to sell more than two million devices in Pakistan since its entry, which is a testimony of the growing demand for realme smartphones. A local assembly line has also been setup in the country to absorb the rise in demand for realme products which in-turn will bring a lot of benefit to the end-consumer by making product prices even more attractive.

To further bolster its footprint in Pakistan, realme has also partnered with three leading channel distributors namely Airlink Communications, United Mobile and M&P. The onboarding of these distributors amplifies the sales-first approach that is at the heart of realme’s strategy for Pakistan in 2022.

realme strives to provide the ultimate value-for-money and top notch quality in its products, while also being a flag bearer of affordable 5G technology. As a young brand, realme resonates with the youth’s daring spirit and is focused on delivering trendsetting smartphones for young people around the world.

Islamabad (Muhammad Yasir)  PTCL Group has welcomed the 4^th batch of its flagship leadership development program, ‘FUEL’ that focuses on carving out the next line of business leaders through two-year immersive training of its most talented and top performing employees.

To welcome the new batch and bid farewell to the graduating batch, an event was organized in Islamabad that was attended by Hatem Bamatraf, President & Group Chief Executive Officer, PTCL & Ufone, along with the top management.

On the occasion, Syed Mazhar Hussain, Group Chief Human Resource Officer, PTCL & Ufone shared his thoughts with the audience & said, “I congratulate the graduating batch and wish them good luck in their professional careers. Moreover, I would like to wholeheartedly welcome the new batch and encourage them to pursue their dreams with enthusiasm and passion. I have always believed that great companies are a reflection of their people. When you have talented people in your company with the right culture & right discipline, they can move mountains.”

PTCL launched FUEL program in 2013 to prepare the next generation of leaders to assume important organizational responsibilities and so far over 100 employees from various functions have been trained thoroughly. However, this year Ufone is also participating in the program that will provide a learning opportunity for mid-level professionals within the company. FUEL is feedback-intensive and transformative in nature that helps the employees in acquiring a clear perspective on their career path and future. The program consists of rigorous development interventions such as certifications, executive coaching, leadership academy in collaboration with LUMS, mobility program, job rotation, etc.

PTCL and Ufone have been recently recognized as the Best Places to Work by the Pakistan Society of Human Resource Management (PSHRM) at its 2021 Annual awards, thereby authenticating the Group’s standing as one of the most employee-centric organizations in the country.

Lahore (Muhammad Yasir) Huawei Technologies Pakistan and Pakistan Telecommunication Company Limited (PTCL) launched the PTCL-Huawei Managed CloudCampus Solution with which enterprises will be empowered to run critical applications with complete security and ensured data privacy at their disposal. Not only so, enhanced performance will be delivered with higher capacity bandwidth, network visibility, and a seamless on-ramp to the cloud with significant application performance.

Event was attended by Mr. Zarrar Khan, the group CBSO of PTCL Business Solutions, Mr. Faisal Anwar, CIO, UBL, Mr. Azeem Siddiqui, Head of IT, OneLink, Mr. Salman Ali, CIO, Soneri Bank, Mr. Zeeshan Kaiser, CIO, Samba Bank, Mr. Adnan Siddiqui, CIO, BankIslami, Mr. Gao Weiji, Managing Director, Huawei Enterprises, Mr. Shahzad Rasheed, CEO Huawei Cloud, along with senior management from both organizations.

Recently, the two organizations signed a strategic MOU for Learning Development collaboration that aimed to strengthen their partnership for learning and development of individuals. It paved the way for transformational journey through enhancing resources competitiveness. With learning and development programs in place, PTCL and Huawei continued the planned partnership model in preparation for the emerging technologies adoption and challenges of digital transformation.

This is a first-of-its-kind intelligent network automation Cloud platform that not only integrates management, but also controls and analyzes functions, along with providing a complete life cycle automation of enterprise networks that implements intelligent fault closure through big data analytics. This solution consists of services like: AI-Enabled WIFI-6 Campus, Software Defined LAN as well as Software defined WAN (SD-WAN). The infrastructure of these services employs PTCL’s industry-proven connectivity, capacity and Data Center infrastructure with Huawei’s next-generation autonomous driving network management and control system Cloud platform for enterprise networks.

Speaking at the occasion, Zarrar Hasham Khan, Group Chief Business Solutions Officer, PTCL & Ufone, said, “Pakistan is undergoing a digital transformation, and PTCL, as the national carrier will make sure that we’re playing our role. This event is part of a series of steps that we are taking with different products, but with the same goal to provide convenience to our customers.”

Mr. Gao spoke at the event, “I believe this is a new chapter of cooperation and I look forward to seeing more and more achievements as PTCL and Huawei go forth hand in hand. We’ll continue to work together, we all need to place the improvement of digital skills high on our agenda and tackle the challenges facing governments, enterprises, and even technology firms themselves to be able to bring the benefits of digitization to more people, homes, and organizations than ever before.”

Mr. Shahzad Rasheed reaffirmed the sentiment, stating, “Huawei is the number 1 IT leader in Pakistan, both in terms of installments and revenue. Under the leadership of Mr. Zarrar I have zero doubt that success is near, this partnership can do miracles. We have to believe in this relationship and execute it.”

As part of their mission to build a fully connected and intelligent world, Huawei and PTCL are always aiming to contribute to digital empowerment to help realize the vision of Digital Pakistan.