ISLAMABAD, The Higher Education Commission (HEC) has approved scholarship cases of 86 needy students for the academic year 2009-10.

The approval was made by the scholarship management committee of the HEC at a meeting here on Wednesday. The scholarships would be awarded under the USAID funded merit and need based scholarship programme.

The meeting was chaired by Dr Sohail Naqvi, Executive Director HEC, and attended by representatives of participating institutions, scholars and senior officials of the HEC.

The selected students belong to the Institute of Business Administration (IBA), Karachi; Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad; NWFP Agriculture University, Peshawar, and Balochistan University of Information Technology, Engineering and Management Sciences.

The selected students will complete their education by December 2011 on scholarships that cover tuition fee, transportation, books, lodging and incidental costs.

The HEC in collaboration with the US government initiated the merit and need based scholarship programme to provide assistance to those talented but needy students who are unable to continue their education due to financial disadvantages.

These scholarships have been available since 2004 in the field of business administration and agriculture in 11 participating universities.

Speaking on the occasion, Dr Naqvi stressed the need for fund raising activities for sustainability of the financial aid activities. He said the involvement of local community was essential in order to raise funds for generating scholarships for needy students.