May 07, 2007	Monday	Rabi-us-Sani 19, 1428

ISLAMABAD, May 6: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz has approved a programme for setting up community schools to promote basic education, functional literacy and income generating skills.

The country-wide programme will be implemented with the participation of federal, provincial and district governments. It will be funded, monitored and supervised by the federal government while it will be implemented by the provincial and district governments.

The decision to this effect was taken at a meeting chaired by the prime minister here on Saturday. The meeting was attended by Minister for Education Lt-Gen (retd) Javed Ashraf Kazi, Minister of State for Education Ms Anisa Zeb Tahirkheli, Planning Commission’s deputy chairman Dr M. Akram Sheikh, Punjab’s Minister for Literacy Dr Muhammad Shafiq Chaudhry, NWFP Minister for Education Maulana Fazle Ali and Baluchistan’s Minister for Social Welfare, Women Development Special Education Literacy and Non-formal Education Mrs Shama Parveen Magsi.

Highlighting government efforts to promote education, the prime minister said the country’s literacy level was around 60 per cent and there was a need to redouble efforts to improve the literacy rate to achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Stressing the need for better coordination between government departments and NGOs, the prime minister urged all stakeholders, including NGOs, to take up the task on war footings.

The prime minister urged provincial governments to increase allocations for education.

The prime minister decided that the Basic Education Community School Project would be executed by the National Education Foundation. The ministry of education, he said, would set up a separate unit in the Foundation to implement, oversee and monitor the project.

Earlier, the education secretary briefed about the project and said 20,000 schools (10,185 existing and 9,815 new) would be set up in rural areas and urban slums.

He said that the programme was female-oriented as 95 per cent teachers and 70 per cent students would be girls.

He said that a steering committee would be setup at the federal level having representation of all provinces, Azad Kashmir and Fata.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Aziz called for restructuring the entire Railways system, making it more reliable and a financially-viable organisation.

He was chairing a meeting to review Pakistan Railways’ performance.

He asked the railways ministry to prepare a strategy to achieve its objectives. The strategy will be submitted to the Prime Minister in four weeks.

The prime minister said Pakistan Railways had a huge ‘land bank’, which needed to be managed intelligently to generate revenues.

He said Pakistan Railways should prepare a business strategy, focusing more on passenger and freight services, yield profitability, marketing and better use of its assets to increase profits. He said there was a need for more investments in Pakistan Railways and its restructuring and business plans should also explore investment and funding sources.

Minister for Railways Sheikh Rashid Ahmed said daily loading of freight wagons had been increased from 600 to about 1,000 and the turnaround time of about 140 hours with high-capacity wagons between Karachi-Lahore had been achieved as against 360 hours with conventional freight stock.