ISLAMABAD, Aug 9: Addressing a large gathering of senior army officers at the GHQ auditorium on vital issue of human development and its future challenges in Pakistan on Tuesday, National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) Chairman Dr Nasim Ashraf said in today’s context the national security is dependent on human security which stems out directly from human development.

A press release issued by the NCHD said Dr Ashraf gave examples of countries in South and East Asia that achieved remarkable progress over the last one or two decades by investing in education, while Pakistan lags behind in human development index in comparison with the countries with similar income level.

He said the government was fully committed to use all available means and provide adequate resources to catch up the deficiencies.

Innovative techniques are being employed by the NCHD to achieve universal primary education (UPE) and improve literacy rates especially among women, he said.

“The challenge is to take human development to scale at national level and for that we need to create partnerships by mobilizing people and communities through a national campaign to achieve our goals” said Dr Ashraf.

He said the NCHD had so far mobilized 40,000 volunteers in 30,000 villages across Pakistan to support education and health programmes.

“Nearly 9000 community-based primary schools have been opened in remote areas by providing local village based teachers and over 8800 literacy centres have been completed making over 200,000 women literate in last three years.”

Similarly 2.2 million women in all the four provinces of Pakistan have been trained in how to make ORS at home to address the child mortality, he said.

Dr Ashraf said unless every Pakistani realized his individual responsibility in this national effort, the government could not achieve its targets. He specially appealed to the army officers to be part of the social initiative and create awareness among their friends and family members on this important topic of national security.