Ghulam Kibria, an engineer by profession, started his career as a teacher in Aligarh Muslim University Engineering College before independence. After indeenedence the came over to Pakistan and restarted his lfie as an engineering business executive. However, he continued teaching as a hobby, first in Milli Techniqh Idara. Lahore and then in Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) in Karachi as well delivering extension lectures in Colleges and universities.
As a professional executive he came in deep contact with Lahore small engineering and capital goods industry producing such wonderful item and product as cinema projectors, diesel engines, machine tools and many other similar. None of the producers was an educated as an engineer, most of them were semi-educated and only hardly literate. What surprised Ghulam Kibria was that no one ever transfered technology to any one of them. To find out as to how it could happens, he went first to England and then to Germany to work as a shop floor worker, not an engineer.
This enabled Ghulam Kibria to understand how technology works and evolves in real life. While in Germany he got an an offer to work as senior executive in a foreign company in Lahore. This helped him further understand the real dynamics of technology and became a sort of expert in technology appropriate to developing countries.
In1973, on the suggestion of Dr. Schumacher, world known economist and author of the history making book Ghulam Kibria Small is Beautiful, Finance Minister of Pakistan requested Ghulam Kibria to start organization based on small or appropriate technology. This way he became founder Chairman of Appropriate Technology Organization (ATDO). present day Pakistan Council for Appropriate Technology (PCAT).
One, the remarkable achievement of ATDO is small hydero electric plants, turbines for which were fabricated in Peshawar and were paid for an installed and operated by residents of villages in Shanglapar, Swat. They were all trained by ATDO.
After imposition of martial law in 1977, Ghulam Kibria resigned and was offered consultancy by the United Nation's Economic and Social Council for Asia Pacific (ESCAP) to provide guidance in small agricultural mechinery. In this capacity he had posting in South Korea, Philliphines, Indonesia. Sri Landa, India and Bangladesh.
Due to domestic circumastances he left that job to provide consultancy within Pakistan to local development financing institutions and also to foreign agencies like Dutch government agency, the World Bank and others. In mid-1980 Ghulam Kibria started writing books based on experience he gained in developing underdeveloped and less developed countries based on self-acquired appropriate technology.
The present book, Paving the Highway for Development is his seventh which sums up as to how and under what circumstances technology can be utlilized to develop underdeveloped and developing countries.
We feel pleasure to introduce ourselves as Printers , Publishers, Distributors and Exporters of the Holy Arabic text, commentary and translation in English and of publications of Islam and Islamic studies in order to propagate Teachings of Islam.