Sindh Information and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani has sought the assistance of bona fide charitable organizations to provide education to children of every labourer in the province as the provincial government will soon adopt the concept of universalization of social security.
The Sindh Information and Labour minister stated this while addressing at the concluding session of the Children Carnival and inter-school competition held here at Arts Council on Saturday night to mark the silver jubilee of the foundation of the Green Crescent Trust (GCT).
The GCT has been managing a network of over 150 charitable schools in remote and rural parts of Sindh having enrolment of 29,000 students. Saeed Ghani said on the occasion that Sindh government needed support of organizations like the GCT, which could help the provincial authorities in meeting the colossal target of educating children of all the labourers in the province.
“We will bear all the expenses of such a mission while organizations like yours will work with us to meet this target. We have no problem in working under such an arrangement,” he said.
“We will take you on board whenever this policy is finalized as we want support of organizations like yours,” said the provincial minister while addressing the GCT officials.
He said the government was under obligation to lend full support to the private sector people who spent their time, money, and resources to provide education to children of underprivileged families as by making such efforts they were sharing the responsibilities of the state.
He assured fullest support to GCT in its drive to provide quality education to children of low-income groups and also to fight the menace of out-of-school-children. “We will provide more help than whatever support you want from us,” said the provincial minister.
He acknowledged that no country could make progress without providing education to its children.Also speaking on the occasion, GCT CEO Zahid Saeed urged the government to declare educational emergency in the country with support of the provinces to deal with the alarming issues like out-of-school children.
He said that 4.2 million out-of-school children alone in Sindh was a serious challenge for the government as for this available resources and budget for the education sector had to be spent on transparent and efficient basis.He said that per capita income of Pakistan would increase by five times if the government worked with dedication to improve educational standards and to enrol the out-of-school children as had happened in the case of China.He said that GCT had begun its journey some 25 years back and decided to establish schools in such remote and rural parts of Sindh where there was no existing government or private school.
Zahid Saeed said that first school of the GCT had been established in a remote part of District West of Karachi with one teacher and 50 students as after 25 years the enrollment of schools in the GCT’s schools had been increased to 29,000 who were being taught by a faculty of qualified 1400 teachers.He said that the GCT had the aim to increase its enrollment of students to 100,000 in next five years.
He suggested establishing a consortium of like-minded NGOs working in Sindh to spread the cause of education for underprivileged families.Comissioner Karachi Iftikhar Shalwani, Vice-Admiral (retd) Arifullah Hussani, Arts Council President Muhammad Ahmed Shah, and others also spoke.