13 January 2005	Thursday	02 Zilhaj 1425

ISLAMABAD, Jan 12: Federal Education Minister Lt-Gen (retired) Javed Ashraf Qazi on Wednesday underlined the need for better coordination with donors for effective utilization of funds in the education sector.

He was speaking at an international donors conference organized at the auditorium of Academy of Educational Development and Planning. The meeting was attended by the representatives of the 18 international donors partners, including the World Bank, USAID, AUSAID, JICA, Unicef, IDB etc, State Minister for Education Ghulam Bibi Bharwana, officials of the federal and provincial education ministries.

These donors have already given Rs308 million in the education sector and set to assist the government with Rs905.1 million during 2005 to 2009 for the uplift of basic education in the country.

A source told Dawn that during the meeting, provincial education secretaries shared their reservations of direct funding by donors to the district governments.

In response, the federal minister impressed upon the donors to directly coordinate with federal or provincial governments for the effective utilization of funds.

"With solo flights by the donors will land both the education ministry and assisting partners nowhere, as the financial and technical assistance provided by the donors for the uplift of education sector is dormant in the national education budgetary statistics", Gen Qazi said.

He maintained that in future, federal ministry in coordination with the provincial ministries would identify districts, which needed the donors' assistance

He also informed the participants that for this purpose, he had set up a donors coordination committee in the federal ministry of education under the chairmanship of education secretary along with the joint secretaries of planning & policy, project and training wings to establish long lasting and effective contacts with the international donors.

He told the donors that due to ineffective coordination and interaction, many donors were following the suit in the same selected districts thus leaving behind other needy districts.

Each needy district should be given equal financial and technical attention to remove discrepancy from the overall educational development, he said adding that repetition and overlapping of the developmental activities by the donors should also be sorted out.

Minister for education also apprised the donor community about the establishment of technical and vocational training centres at every district of the country to produce skilled, trained and educated youth.

He said according to an analysis, host of the terrorists caught by the law-enforcement authorities revealed that each youth was highly qualified from the elite educational institutions but due to non-availability of jobs they had become an easy pray to terrorist organizations.