RECORDER REPORT

LAHORE: The University of Management & Technology (UMT) and Drug Advisory Training Hub a project of Youth Council for Anti Narcotics (YOCFAN) signed a MoU to declare UMT as “Drug Free Campus” with a complete ban on smoking and legal or illegal drugs in university premises.

The MoU ceremonial held at university campus. Dr Naveda Kitchlew, Dean Internationalization and Syed Zulfiqar Hussain, Consultant, Anti-Drug/Narcotics Campaign signed the MoU.

The new tendency of hard and soft drug addiction is increasing day by day in our universities and colleges in various part of the country and drugs are available in the market. UMT is one the first institution not only in Pakistan but also in South Asian region, which is declared to be drug free campus with more than 14000 students.

The main theme of drug free campus programme is to stop smoking and use of legal or illegal drugs, to provide the basic and evidence based information against use of drugs and YOCFAN would establish educational and counselling centre with the help of UMT.

Dr Hasan Sohaib Murad, Rector UMT said that our aim is to provide healthy and positive environment to the young people in the university and also outside the campus. This is indeed a positive step to establish and declare UMT drug free campus in South Asia, he added.

Syed Zulfiqar said unfortunately addiction is becoming a saturated culture of many institutions of Pakistan, where substances are freely available to dangerous extent. Unfortunately some students have also been died by it.