LARKANA: Sindh’s Senior Minister for Education and Information Nisar Ahmed Khuhro has urged youth to be ready to shoulder future responsibility as they constitute 60 per cent of country’s population.
He was addressing the ‘Future leaders conference’ jointly organised by the ‘Youth Parliament’ and the youth affairs department at Sir Shahnawaz Bhutto Memorial Library here on Monday.
He said youth’s preparedness would not only positively contribute to development, but would also provide a chance to link them with country’s issues and solving problems. Keeping in view the important role of youth, the Sindh government had reserved seats for the youth to contest in the upcoming local government elections and Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari wanted to have their representation in the elected houses, Mr Khuhro said.
Mr Khuhro said Oct 12 was a ‘black day’ in the country’s history when a dictator, Gen Parvez Musharraf , toppled an elected democratic government and prime minister Nawaz Sharif was jailed.
“We (PPP) condemned the act of the dictator though Nawaz Sharif did not belong to our party, but he was an elected prime minister,” he said. This act of Mushrraf had tarnished country’s image in the eyes of international community, Mr Khuhro said.
Dictators had always framed laws to perpetuate their rule and that was why people were sentenced, whipped and jailed, therefore people were weakened.
“We have empowered and armed people with the strength of the vote as the PPP did not even think of weakening democracy,” he said.
He urged people to protest against what he called ‘absentee teachers’ so as to compel them to attend schools and teach students.
He was thankful to the stakeholders who had sent him information on social media regarding 3,000 ghost teachers and disclosed that action against them was in the offing.
He said that despite free education up to matriculation and availability of textbooks, 4,000,000 students were going to schools and an equal number of children were out of schools.
“And this is the time for the youth to come out with a commitment to help enhance enrolment,” he said, adding that they could play their role in educating the masses if they were committed to contributing only half an hour for the purpose, he said.
Earlier, organiser Rizwan Jaffer welcomed the minister and briefly informed the audience about his organisation ‘Youth Parliament’.
Published in Dawn, October 13th, 2015
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