ISLAMABAD, Jan 13: Education Minister Zobaida Jalal on Tuesday challenged the nationalist parties in Balochistan to visit any part of the province with her and see development in the education sector.

The minister proposed a joint committee, comprising members from the treasury as well as the opposition benches, to visit different areas of Balochistan to verify whether the literacy rate, especially among women, had increased or not.

"During the 53 years, they had done nothing for development of the province," she said, adding that she secured highest number of votes from Turbat and Gwadar because she was working in the area for the last twenty years.

The minister, who faced the opposition for the first time in the Senate, claimed that the female literacy in Balochistan had increased to 35 per cent and not stagnant at 0.2 per cent.

She said during her last four years as a minister, a large number of funds had been released not for building infrastructure but upgrading schools, colleges and universities and encouraging enrolments in the educational institutions.

"We have inherited a lot of misuse of funds by the successive governments and I know many schools were opened in many areas, which are still without any student," she said. "But we are not allowing misuse of funds anymore," she said.