PESHAWAR, Aug 10: Frontier Province Education Minister Syed Imtiaz Hussain Gilani said on Saturday that the government had allocated 27 per cent of the total provincial budget for improving the literacy rate in the NWFP.

Mr Gilani, delivering a lecture on ‘Education, Human Development and the Future of Pakistan’ at Hazara University as the chief guest, said 80 per cent of the budget earmarked to the education sector would be spent on the uplift of primary education, and out of this 70 per cent had been allocated for women education.

He said the government had converted some Urdu-medium schools to the English-medium institutes, which, he claimed, were bearing encouraging results. The future of Pakistan, he said, rested on the public sector education and, therefore, efforts were being made to promote this sector. The government was giving top priority to the education in the country, he added.

The government, according to him, had planned the establishment of a network of model schools and colleges. He stressed upon the students to strive hard to bring about a positive change in the education sector.

Mr Gilani, lamenting lack of leadership in the country, said God had blessed the country with the unmatched talent, but the country unfortunately lacked sincere leaders.

The present government, he claimed, had brought radical changes in the outlook of the leadership, saying that the past leaders claimed to be the owners of the country without considering the fact that the country belonged to 140 million people.

There remained two parallel systems of education in the country which clearly showed a difference of thinking, he said and claimed that the government would promote the public sector education institutes to eliminate this dual standard.

Earlier, Hazara University Vice-chancellor Prof Dr Mohammad Ashraf Adeel while welcoming the chief guest highlighted some distinctive features of the university. He said that though the university was new, it imparted world-class education to the students with a wide-range of academic courses.