$14.6m Unicef fund for girls' enrolment: Primary education
By Khawar Ghumman
ISLAMABAD, Dec 6: Unicef will provide a financial assistance of $14.6 million to Pakistan during the next four years to enable it to achieve 80 per cent girls' enrolment at primary level.
This was stated by Unicef Executive Director Carol Bellamy during her meeting with Federal Education Minister Lt-Gen (retired) Javed Ashraf Qazi at his office on Monday. Ms Bellamy said the country had earned a strategic position for the economic policies it had been successfully pursuing among the comity of developing countries.
She maintained that Pakistan had secured the political will and commitment at the highest level during the last five years which had paved the way for successful implementation of various plans and projects in the education sector.
She lauded the efforts being made by the country and the pace at which it was moving in to achieve targets committed at international forums. She said Pakistan would also achieve the targets of Education for All as the current education policy had been devised keeping in view commitments the country had made at the international forums.
Speaking on the occasion, the education minister said he had established a 'Donor Coordination Cell' in the ministry to facilitate international donors desirous to assist in the education sector.
Mr Qazi reiterated that he would soon initiate scrutiny of funds disbursed by international donors to various NGOs in the education sector for the judicious use of the assistance.
He further told that he had asked the country's economy managers to make an annual increase equivalent to one per cent of the GNP in the budgetary allocation for the education sector, which would bring the allocation from 2.3 per cent of the GNP to about an ideal allocation of four per cent.
The minister maintained that no government prior to 1999 had accorded priority status to education. Ms Bellamy lauded the collaboration between the education ministry and Unicef for delivering service to areas which were neglected in the past and vowed to further enhance and strengthen current partnership between Pakistan and Unicef through more funding.
Our Staff Reporter adds: Unicef's Executive Director Carol Bellamy on Monday said Pakistan would not achieve gender parity as well as the Education for All (EFA) goals by the year 2005 and 2015, respectively.
Speaking at a press conference soon after her meeting with Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, Ms Bellamy said Pakistan was still a leader in many ways and had made good progress this year in sectors like enhancing enrolment of girls in schools.
However, we still look with concern at some of the statistics that show how children are doing here, she said. Comparing figures of child survival, infant mortality and enrolment rates in primary education with other countries of the region, the Unicef's executive director said it was a matter of concern to see that Pakistan still lagged behind on these fronts and therefore needed to catch up quickly.
Sixty per cent of child deaths in Pakistan could be prevented by focusing on a limited number of childhood diseases like diarrhoea, pneumonia and neo-natal infections. She brushed aside the impression that religious extremism was one of the reasons preventing Pakistan from achieving the millennium goals. But, she added that investments in the education sector should match with the current economic growth of the country.
Pakistan has excelled in technology and telecommunication but emphasis should also be laid on providing more facilities to primary education through teachers' training, ensuring enrolment in primary schools in the rural areas and completion of courses by the students.
She was happy to note that polio cases this year had dropped by 50 per cent in Pakistan because of coordinated national immunization campaigns. About HIV/Aids, Ms Bellamy said though Pakistan was a low prevalence country, it was time to confront the disease through serious campaigns so that the menace could not increase.
Unicef with the help of the Planning Commission has developed a system of data collection to have a good monitoring and evaluation of Unicef's programme in Pakistan, Ms Bellamy said.
Unicef country's representative Omer Abidi informed the press that religious scholars played a significant role in reducing the number of polio cases in the country as they not only used mosques to disseminate the importance of immunization but also helped in going door-to-door to convince people as to how important it was for their children to administer polio drops.
There is a spirit to improve welfare in Pakistan, Ms Bellamy said, adding that nobody could prevent Pakistan from moving forward to deliver beneficial societal change if human development was harnessed in a concerted way by involving young people determined to offer an equitable future society.
"This will be manifested both in legislative reform that brings Pakistan into line with the commitments made on ratifying the Convention on the Rights of the Child and in enhanced implementation of programmes to benefit the most disadvantaged," she said.
