LAHORE, Sept 29: Punjab Governor Khalid Maqbool has stressed the need to develop positive thinking to fight illiteracy and economic degradation.

Speaking at a function arranged to celebrate the International Literacy Day by the Bunyad Literacy Community Council at Alhamra Hall on Monday, he emphasized that “mental impoverishment” had promoted feudalism and use of narcotics in society. “No progress can be made without changing the thinking process.”

The younger generation, said the governor, should be trained to develop the right thinking and provided quality education.

He said the government was focusing on all the public sector schools, especially those in rural areas, to promote education. The district governments were also taking initiatives to enhance the literacy rate, he said, urging the private sector to join hands with the government in promoting the cause of education.

The government had established over 3,000 adult and vocational literacy centres, besides hundreds of early childhood centres and Ujala centres across the province. He also said the literacy department had planned to improve the literacy rate in Dera Ghazi Khan, Khanewal, Khushab and Mandi Bahauddin within four years.

Earlier, Punjab Education Minister Mian Imran Masood highlighted the plans of the department the most prominent of which, he said, was educating people, especially girls in the rural areas. He added that the government had decided to give Rs200 monthly stipend to girls studying in class VI to VIII.

“It is a matter of grave concern for the education department that almost half of the nine million students getting admission to class-I drop out before reaching the matriculation level in the province,” he said.

At primary level, he said, the government would recruit only the female graduates for teaching.

The government would spend Rs21 billion on development schemes in the education sector in three years under the Education Reforms Package, the minister said. He urged the private sector and NGOs to join hands with the department to decrease the drop out rate in the public sector schools. School councils would be introduced for this purpose, he added.

Unicef Punjab chief Dr Ayman Abulaban quoted its statistics as revealing that 90 per cent boys and 70 per cent girls were enrolled, but 50 per cent of them dropped out before matriculation.

The organization was supporting the Education for All (EFA) plan to increase enrolment, particularly for the girls, to lessen the gender gap. Unicef, he said, had achieved its targets of lowering drop out rate in the Sialkot, Rawalpindi and Bahawalpur districts.

During the next five years, he said, it would enrol all children of 5-7 years in six districts — Sheikhupura, Kasur, Sargodha, Mianwali, Rahim Yar Khan and Rajanpur.

A Unesco (Islamabad) representative said around 36 million children, most of them in South Asia, were being denied their right to get education.

Pakistan had been included in the countries that face serious challenges to achieve Dakkar conference’s literacy targets by 2015, he said.

Literacy Department Secretary Abid Saeed, BLCC senior director Shaheen Atiqur Rahman and chief minister’s adviser Syed Mowahid Husain also spoke on the occasion.