ISLAMABAD: As a part of efforts to promote human security, the Japanese government has decided to provide a financial assistance of $236,230 for four social development projects in education and rural electrification in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Punjab.

The four national non-governmental organisations whose projects will get the Japanese grant assistance are: Learning Awareness and Motivation Programme (LAMP) in Khyber district, Friends Welfare Association (FWA) in Torghar district, Hana Development Council (HDC) in Mandi Bahauddin and Actions for Human Advancement (AHAT) in Kasur district, said the Japanese embassy on Thursday.

Human security is an idea focusing on an individual to strengthen the community and independence of each person with protection and capability development in order to achieve their potential.

The grant of $73,514 provided to LAMP will be utilised for the expansion of a primary section of a school for boys and girls in a village of Khyber to overcome the problem of crowded classrooms.

Currently, the school having classes from play group to grade 10 has over 950 enrollments and over 300 students sit outside their classrooms in the open because of the limited sitting capacity in the classrooms.

Grant to be used through four NGOs for promotion of education and rural electrification in Punjab & KP

Earlier, the school was expanded to grade 10 with the financial assistance provided by the government of Japan in the financial year 2011 and 2015.

The grant of $64,868 provided to Friends Welfare Association will be spent on the construction of a building for a primary and middle school in Torghar. At present, over 130 girls and boys use the premises of a local mosque for their classes because of the lack of a school building.

The new school building will also be used in the second shift for middle school classes for girls.

The grant of $42,818 provided to Hana Development Council will assist in installation of an electricity scheme for seven communities of Mandi Bahauddin where there is no electricity.

Together with a local power generation company and participation of local communities, the project will install electricity equipment – transformers, polls, electricity lines and meters and connect it with the national grid. The scheme is expected to benefit over 1650 community members.

AHAT will spend the grant of $55,030 on the expansion of a public elementary school in Kasur district. Currently, the NGO runs the school in a rented building which has poor infrastructure and limited capacity in the classrooms.

With the construction of a new school building, children will be able to continue their education in a conducive environment. Over 700 boys and girls will get benefit from this project.

Japanese Ambassador Matsuda Kuninori expressed the hope that these projects will help girls and boys to have an easy access to their basic right of education and help local the communities get maximum benefit from the rural electrification project.

The government of Japan will continue to support the people of Pakistan to improve their living standard and these projects will contribute to strengthen decades-long friendly relationship between the people of Japan and Pakistan, said the ambassador.

Published in Dawn, March 27th, 2020