LARKANA: Sindh Minister for Education and Parliamentary Affairs Nisar Ahmed Khuhro has urged officials to work hard to raise enrolment and persuade parents to admit their children to government schools instead of opting for private institutions.

He said at the inauguration ceremony of a newly-built portion of the government primary school, Murad Wahan, here on Monday that teachers should impart education honestly so that no child was left unlettered.

He said the government was providing textbooks and education free of cost to spread education and promised more facilities for the school.

He assured teachers of seniority-based promotions and said the departmental promotion committee would soon start the process.

Earlier on Sunday, the minister distributed cheques among the poor and deserving women of the Christian community.

He said on the occasion that PPP government was determined to serve the masses, help the poor through the Benazir Income Support Programme and impart training to the jobless youth in different disciplines to enable them to earn their livelihood.

‘Thar commission an insult to parents of dying children’

Veteran politician Mumtaz Ali Bhutto has termed constitution of another commission to probe worsening Thar situation an insult to the parents whose children are dying of diseases, starvation and shortage of medicines.

Talking to different delegations who called on him at his residence in Mirpur Bhutto on Monday, he said the commission itself spoke volumes for the rulers’ ineptness to handle the crisis.

He rejected the Sindh chief minister’s statement that foreign delegations from the United States, China and other countries were visiting Thar to look for investment opportunities and said the foreigners were actually coming to express sympathies with drought-hit Thar people, he said.

He accused the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz government of focusing on Karachi only, leaving the rest of the province to bear with the trauma of perpetual misrule.

The federal government’s indifference towards the interior of Sindh had also multiplied people’s sufferings, he said.

He said the PPP’s rule in Sindh had entered its eight consecutive year but it had only added to people misery. Politics which used to be a means to serve the masses, work for national development and prosperity had been turned into a lucrative business, he said.

Published in Dawn, February 9th, 2016