GUJRAT, Oct 7: Provincial social welfare minister Shaheen Atiqur Rahman has said the government is keen on eliminating illiteracy from the country to ensure rapid progress in every field.

She was speaking at the Ujala Centre’s concluding session organized by a local NGO Decent Welfare Society at the Bashir Hospital on the Railway Road, on Saturday.

She said Punjab had successfully implemented programmes like the Ujala centre to introduce primary education in remote areas where literacy rate was very low.

The government had, she said started the programme in eight tehsils of the province, including Kharian, and some 2,000 primary schools were set up. As many as 60,000 girls between 10 and 19 were being given education, books and bags free of cost.

The minister continued that the government was making efforts to get these schools affiliated to the Allama Iqbal Open University and it was high time for philanthropists to come forward with generous funds for completion of this project.

Solution to issues related to women and children, she said, figured high on the government agenda.

Earlier, the minister inaugurated Bashir Hospital’s Intensive Care and Cardiac Care units. She criticized the performance of basic health units (BHUs) and appreciated the Decent Welfare Society for its efforts to provide free medicines to the people of Gujrat by organizing 150 free mobile camps in remote areas within a year.

Dr Ijaz Bashir, head of the Ujala centre, Kharian, said 8,000 students were given free education in as many as 250 primary schools. A total of 22,000 students would be given education within two years, he added.

Later, the minister inaugurated the operation theatre in Aziz Bhatti Shaheed Hospital. DCO Agha Nadeem also spoke on the occasion.