ISLAMABAD, May 7: Democratic institutions can not flourish in a society where half of the adult population is illiterate and most of the voters cannot even read a newspaper.

This was stated by the Unesco director for Pakistan, Ingeborge Breines, at the inaugural ceremony of a workshop on “Functional Literacy Organizers-Educators”, here on Tuesday.

“Pakistan is one of those countries where highest number of illiterates are concentrated due to various reasons ranging from poverty to mismanagement on the part of policy-makers, specially in the education sector”, she said.

Being illiterate is not an individual disability alone, rather it has wide spectrum of societal implications that correlate with education.

Ms Breines said the situation was particularly alarming for women and the literacy gap between men and women was widening. She said illiteracy not only caused dependence, it also stunted people’s potential of participating in decision-making at different levels.

Although, overall literacy rate in the country has increased gradually, the number of illiterates has swelled significantly from 20.25 million in 1951 to 48.8 million in 1998.

However, she appreciated the education ministry for inclusion of adult literacy component in the Education Sector Reforms (ESR-2001-04). She offered Unesco’s full support to the Pakistan government in its efforts to fight against illiteracy.

Referring to the constitution of Pakistan, which calls for removing illiteracy and providing free and compulsory secondary education within minimum possible time-period, she said educationists of the country had to make pertinent policies in this regard.

Dr Mohammad Rasheed, chairman of department of distance learning and non-formal education, Allama Iqbal Open University (AIOU), is supervising the workshop.

Speaking on the occasion, he said: “We have invited representatives of more than 20 non-governmental organizations to the workshop to make this exercise a success story”.

The AIOU has borrowed the concept of functional literacy from regional countries, particularly Sri Lanka, where functional literacy programmes are being effectively run, Dr Rasheed said.

With Unesco’s financial assistance, the varsity has hired some reputed resource persons for the workshop, which will continue till the 11th of this month. In the end, certain recommendations will also be made to improve functional literacy in the country, he added.