KARACHI, Sept 7: The International Literacy Day is being observed worldwide on Sept 8. This year’s theme is “Literacy: the path out of poverty”. On this day, Pakistan facing both poverty and dismal literacy rate needed a honest soul-searching, so as to shun borrowed agendas and instead adopt realistic indigenous policies, tailored according to own needs and requirements.

There is lot of difference between the official figures and estimates of independent organisations about the actual literacy rate but more or less half of our population still needed to learn how to read and write.

The government aims at increasing the literacy rate to 70 per cent by the year 2010. Poverty is another major problem faced by the country, affecting both rural and the urban areas.

The literacy ratio in Pakistan could not be increased unless utilising both formal and informal schooling institutes, but perhaps due to donor-driven policies importance of informal schools, especially, religious schools is being ignored.

A recent survey revealed that among the developing countries of the Asia Pacific region, Pakistan was at the rock bottom of the literacy rate as two out of three Pakistanis were illiterate.

According to the survey of Asian South Pacific Bureau of Adult Education two out of every three Pakistani adults are illiterate; 45.3 per cent people have no access to early childhood care and education; 40.3 per cent have no access to primary schools and 76.1 per cent to secondary schools.

It shows that 58.9 per cent of the Pakistani population is still illiterate. It said that Pakistan's primary school teachers were overworked and under trained as there was only one teacher for 51 students at an average.

On the International Literacy Day, both the citizens and government should go for soul-searching to find out the real causes of our pathetic literacy rate as well as agonising poverty, and to devise ways and means to fully utilize both formal and informal sectors to boost literacy.—PPI