KARACHI, Sept 8: The Sindh Minister for Education and Literacy, Dr Hamida Khuhro, on Wednesday directed concerned authorities of the department to expedited work on the Decentralized Elementary Education Project (DEEP) and other foreign funded programmes to make these projects beneficial for the province in enhancing the quality of education and its literacy rate.

Addressing a review meeting of the Asian Development Bank's funded projects at her office, she told the ADB consultation mission that the Sindh education department was facing a heavy dropout rate of children after primary. She said she wanted to enhance the quality of teachers' training for a subsequent improvement in the quality of education.

In the meeting, the Country Director, ADB, Ali Shah briefed the minister that out of the four ADB-funded projects in Sindh, the Middle School and the Technical Education projects had been completed for which the bank had funded $18 million and $12.5 respectively.

He further informed that the Girls Primary Education Project costing $9.4 million was in its last year, while the DEEP was an umbrella project with a total cost of Rs5,880 million for which the ADB had provided $83.8 million - 77 per cent of the total cost.

Mr Shah expressed his deep concern over the slow progress of the project and said that the on ground progress was only 0.8 per cent though 28 per cent time of the total seven years for the project's completion had passed.

He further pointed out that no high school teacher had yet been posted for the Middle School Project, while only 24 security guards had been recruited out of a total of 179.

He said the same situation prevailed in DEEP, where district project coordinators had yet not been posted in all 16 districts, adding neither had the procurement of vehicles been carried out, nor the selection of schools completed.

He also stressed upon monitoring and evaluation units for the project and assured that the agency would not delay in releasing the required funds but insisted that the previously released funds be utilized.

Mr Shah requested the minister to expedite the recruitment process in these projects, adding that if a ban over recruitment was creating any hindrance, the problem could be solved by seeking special permission for employment from the authorities concerned.

Referring to the issue of publication of textbooks for the project, he said that as per criteria of the ADB, the assignment could not be given to the Sindh Text Book Board (STB) and said that if the department desired so, the STB could contest in a competition of textbooks.

Dr Khuhro assured the delegation that she would strive hard to complete all projects including DEEP and would not tolerate any delay in the process. She announced to hold a review meeting every month to monitor the progress of DEEP. Secretary Education Nadir Ali Markhiani, Additional secretary (Dev) Salih Farooqui and Project Director, DEEP Saindad Solangi also attended. -PPI