Must we deny the right to education to millions of children in Sindh?

Young Kamli, rather slight for her 8 years, comes forward to greet me with a broad smile. She has begun attending her climate-resilient chaura-like Mai Ghariban school in her village Teekum Kohli.

The school building was built as a joint effort by the community by collecting 42,000 rupees, each household contributing 700 rupees by saving 50 rupees a day for 14 days.

Through a process of joint-funding they were able to purchase prefabricated bamboo panels and a collapsible roof from the bamboo workshop in Pono Colony village, a half-hour walk-away.

Low-cost structures for houses, eco-toilets and schools are now readily available from the bamboo workshop set up by master artisans that we have trained in the production of safe, prefabricated bamboo units.

As a result of guidance provided by the suppliers of bamboo school, village fathers were able to erect the structure within one day on already prepared lime-concrete elevated plinth.

To ensure safety and stability, using WhatsApp and following the laid down rigorous procedure, we monitored every stage of construction activity. Within a couple of days village mothers prepared the woven matting to cover the bare skeleton of the bamboo structure.

In the meantime, other villagers procured wild-growing reeds from the vicinity, and soon the roof structure was covered by layers of thatch.

A thatched roof is the time-tested traditional water-proof roofing system, which allows air circulation, keeping the interior cool in spite of intense heat outside.

Village mothers went ahead with skilful application of lime-earth plaster on external and internal surfaces of the wall matting, along with laying a lime concrete floor.

As a result of a joint effort, within a week the flood-safe school building was complete. And. within no time, the parents located a local teacher and the enrolments started.

To my surprise I heard of the first classes being started almost immediately after the completion of the building. When I learnt that the first ones to enter the school were girl children, I felt vindicated.

I have always contended that for parents and for girls themselves to feel secure in attending school, the building must be located within the village. Without a policy of ‘One Village One School’ for primary education, a majority of girl children in Pakistan will remain non-literate.

Within 6 weeks of our launching the school programme, by the first week of June, one hundred schools had been built and classes had started.

The attendance was promising. Over 6,000 children had begun to attend school, and in view of the children’s enthusiastic response, some teachers began two shifts per day. I expect that soon, many other schools may also have to opt for two shifts.

Due to the generosity of a few friends, Kamli’s school is one of fifty Mai Ghariban schools which are also equipped with solar panels and LCD screens. After ten days of attending her TV School, as this is how her school is known, Kamli is able to begin singing the national anthem along with simple jingles in English and Urdu.

She can now utter 20 words of English and has learnt to count up to 10. Why would she not be excited to attend school; she knows that every day she learns a new lesson and every week a new jingle! The school in her isolated village has regulated her life, and, importantly, it has opened up a delightful world of learning that she never knew about!

This remarkable initiative has been undertaken by our Zero Charity villages. They have become food secure as a result of the programme we launched a year ago for achieving freedom from hunger and malnutrition through the effort of post-flood destitute villages themselves. With welcome guidance from our barefoot experts, they are growing vegetables, rearing chickens and breeding fish along with planting fruit trees such as ber or jujube.

The food they are producing with their own effort is providing them with vitamins and minerals in the vegetables and local jujube, along with proteins, iron and zinc in eggs and fish, and by bartering their extra vegetable produce for grain, they make their roti with nutritious whole wheat or barley. It is because they have sufficient nutrition and feel strong and secure, that the Zero Charity villages are able to begin saving small amounts that have enabled them to contribute to a collective effort to ensure a better future for their children.

What of other, more than seven million children in Sindh for whom attending school remains a distant dream?

First, it was due to COVID-19 lockouts, coupled with ghost-schools syndrome and recently the partial or full collapse of 22,000 school buildings after the Great Floods of 2022, millions of Kamlis have no chance of schooling in the near future.

For the State not to enable school going-age children to attend school is a violation of their basic right.

As if this human right violation was not enough, we have subjected them to further injustices – abject poverty, inadequate and unsafe shelter, lack of sanitation and unhygienic drinking water, disease, hunger and stunted growth, disparity and discrimination. These injustices tantamount to condemning generations of young people to remain imprisoned in the vicious poverty trap.

Is it really shortage of funds that is hindering provision of educational infrastructure? Or is the pursuit of high carbon expensive structures preventing our children from attending school - structures that are built with high-cost materials that are easily pilfered?

Why can’t the government and international grant- and loan-giving agencies begin promoting low-carbon, and low-impact construction techniques to build economical buildings using locally sourced materials? As a humanitarian architect, who, for the last two decades has built affordable, disaster-resilient buildings in all parts of Pakistan, I know that SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) targets could be met with available funding if there was a resolve to opt for low cost, safe construction using sustainable, local materials.

With the current allocations available with joint UN/Government of Sindh accounts for rebuilding school buildings, it would be possible to build four or five times the number of sustainable schools within the cost of high-carbon structures that are planned.

It is almost two years since August 2022 flood devastation, but there seems scant progress on reconstruction of school buildings. How long will we keep the Kamlis of Sindh deprived of their rights?

Copyright Business Recorder, 2024