ISLAMABAD – Federal Minister for Education and former director-general of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Javed Ashraf Qazi on December 16 said the UN World Food Programme (WFP) would provide $51.6 million assistance to government to encourage about half a million girl students to stay in schools.
The minister said this while inaugurating an art exhibition organized by the World Food Programme (WFP), Pakistan, here. The WFP, he said, would provide the assistance to the Government of Pakistan in mid-2005 to save 519,754 girl students from being dropped out besides enhancing the literacy rate.
He lauded the efforts and cooperation of the WFP in curtailing the dropout rate of girls in the primary education throughout the country. In 2001-03, he said, 164,000 schoolgirls were beneficiaries of the WFP-funded $14.2 million financial assistance which greatly brought the dropout rate to minimum in the food insecure districts of the country.
Mr. Qazi said he had directed the Planning and Development Wing of the ministry to submit him a monthly report of the development activities of the international donors.
The wing, he said, had also been asked to report the bilateral cooperation extended by the donor agencies to each other in implementing the educational development programs.
The education ministry, he said, would extend all out support to the international donors in implementing their programs in all the sectors for the development and progress of the country.
A Donors Coordination Cell, he said, had been established in the ministry of education to facilitate and supplement the efforts of the donor partners in a bid to make education accessible to each and every individual.
Mr. Qazi further said that Pakistan would soon have encouraging figures and statistics in the education sector after the survey to be conducted in collaboration with Unesco and European Union.
The existing literacy rate, he observed, was based on the 1998 national census, which was 44 per cent, and now 54.5 per cent was the projected rate with 2 per cent annual increase.
The ministry of education, he said, would soon conduct house- to-house survey to get the latest figures in the education sector, which would be encouraging than the projected ones.
Source: Dawn
Date:12/17/2004