Illiteracy impeding development: Khawaja Asif

SIALKOT: Federal Minister for Water and Power Khawaja Muhammad Asif called for collective and concerted efforts for promoting education,saying illiteracy was impeding the process of development in the country.

Talking to reporters here he said that Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) government has focused its special attention on the promotion of education at grossroots level to bring positive changes in every sphere of life.

There is a dire need of changing mindsets of parents to ensure equal education and growth for girls also across the board,he stressed. Khawaja Asif said that women's education helps in build up economy and overcoming social problems.

"The provision of quality education,facilities of health and infrastructure are the sole responsibility of the state,and PML-N government is utilizing all resources for these facilities on top priority basis across the country", he said.

He said Pakistani women have the capability and courage to bring revolutionary changes in the society and face challenges.

Khawaja Asif said under Prime Minister's Youth Business loan scheme 50 percent of the total fund allocation has been reserved for women in the country for augementing their efforts to earn livelihood.

"Leaders like him are needed today in the bitter situations found in Pakistan. I strongly encourage our leaders to follow the idea of "Better education leads to a better world". - Rida Rizwan.

USAID, IRC launches ‘Pakistan Reading Project’ to tackle illiteracy rate.

Islamabad: USAID and the International rescue Committee (IRC) has launched a $160 million program named Pakistan Reading Project aiming at tackling one of the highest child illiteracy rates in the world.

Through the Pakistan Reading Project, the IRC and 10 partner organizations will work to improve the quality of reading education in 38,000 schools and develop reading instruction skills of 94,000 teachers over next five years.

“The launch of the Pakistan Reading Project represents a long term commitment from the IRC and USAID to reach 3.2 million children with improved reading programs and ensure that 2.5 million of them are reading at grade level”, says John Keys, the IRC’s senior vice president of international programs. “We anticipate that these boys and girls will carry these skills with them into secondary and tertiary education, and then into adulthood. They are the future of Pakistan”.

Pakistan is one of those few countries where illiteracy rates are high. A 2010 study by Brookings Institution showed tat there were 47 million illiterate adults in Pakistan and the number is not decreasing.

According to government statistics, Pakistan’s primary school enrollment rate is only 66 percent and some 7.2 million primary school age children are not in school. The situation in Pakistan has been widely described as educational emergency.

Illiteracy mars access to justice

A reporter travels through the rural areas of Pakistan in order to experience and see what the situations actually are. This is what he has to say:

While visiting different parts of the country, particularly, those of the Sindh Province, I have logically concluded that apart from extreme poverty, another significant obstacle to the realization of access to justice in the rural Pakistan is the high level of illiteracy prevalent in the country today. It is most unfortunate that the socio-economic structure of the country has made it impossible for the vast majority of Pakistanis to have access to education, notwithstanding the various development plans and programmes by the successive governments, which emphasized the importance of education but unfortunately not a lot was virtually done on the ground. 

This problem has been worsened by the current collapse of public schools, including varsities, which have now made education an exclusive commodity to be purchased and consumed by the bourgeoisie through private institutions.

Yet the inestimable value of education and its capacity to empower the citizenry can hardly be over-emphasized. An educated man will easily adapt to the realities of the situation and have the intellectual capacity to insist on the enforcement of his rights, quite unlike the illiterate. Education thus empowers him/her to maximize the opportunities and resources available in his/her environment.

Since education has the capacity of liberating the individual from ignorance, poverty and diseases, the lack of it has serious mental, political and economic implications, which greatly impede ‘access to justice’ in Pakistan. At a particular level, it breeds poverty, docility, and even forced connivance with agents of oppression and marginalization. The net result is that, today, a large majority of Pakistanis do not have access to social justice and are alienated from the political and economic structures of society. But unfortunately to provide “ access to justice” to the people of this country by promoting literacy, especially, lego-literacy, and alleviating poverty, is not the prime concern of our ruling elite in Pakistan.

Another leader speaks out.

Speaking at the Rotary South Asia Literacy Summit 2013, senior education minister Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, representing Pakistan, said: "Illiteracy is the biggest menace, impeding development of mankind and the situation is more true for south Asia which inhabits more illiterate population than anywhere else."