HYDERABAD, June 9: A seminar, organized by the Islami Jamiat-i-Tulba on the topic of National Budget and Educational Priorities here on Saturday, has demanded of the government to increase the education budget to at least five per cent.

Addressing the seminar, Umair Idrees, the provincial Nazim of the IJT and an educationist, Rana Iqbal and Raheel Qureshi pointed out that Pakistan was among the seven nuclear powers of the world but in literacy it was at number six among the Saarc countries and at number 159 in all the countries of the world.

They claimed that the literacy ratio in Pakistan was between 20 and 25 per cent and according to 1996 census figures, 8.25 million people were illiterate.

They said the education sector during the past 54 years had been totally ignored and the maximum budgetary allocations had never exceeded 2.6 percent.

Even in a backward country like Bangladesh, they said, the budgetary allocations for education were between four and five per cent and in Sri Lanka, the literacy ratio was 90 per cent.

Rana Iqbal said that 54 per cent of children in Pakistan never attended a school and for the remaining ones there were no buildings and in many schools the students had to sit on mates or under the trees.

He said only 200 scholars per annum did their PhD from 38 research institutes of the country. Contrary to this, he said, 5,000 scholars in India obtained PhD degrees every year.

While the annual budget of the biggest university of Pakistan, he said, was only Rs200 million, the annual budget of Aligarh University alone was Rs1,350 million.

The speakers severely criticized the self-finance scheme and the privatization of educational institutions saying that the educational institutions were being converted into commercial enterprises.

POLICE: The additional inspector general of police, Hyderabad region, has appreciated the performance of the districts police and expressed the hope that they will adopt community-friendly attitude and provide justice to the common man at his doorstep.