A parliamentary panel has directed the Ministry of Finance and Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training to immediately resolve the financial and administrative issues of National Commission of Human Development (NCHD).
The Senate Functional Committee on Problems of Less Developed Areas which met here on Tuesday under the chairmanship of Senator Usman Kakar gave these directives. The committee also directed the concerned quarters that all the hurdles related to NCHD employees' pay-scales, regularization, contract and administrative matters must be addressed.
The committee observed that the Commission is doing a great job by imparting education to almost half a million students including children and adults across the country, especially in far-flung areas.
The committee chairman directed NCHD to send the list of fake degree holding employees to Finance Division immediately and the list of dual employment holders by 2nd July which will then be processed by Finance Division in the next few days for grant against the financial demands of NCHD. The committee has been taking up the issues of NCHD since the previous tenure and has made concrete recommendations. The committee sought details of the educational and training centers operating in the country under NCHD.
The committee was told that around 1,600 centers in Punjab, 1,500 in Sindh, 400 in Balochistan and 300 centers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa are present. The committee asked to provide assessment details of these centers in the next meeting. About regularization of contractual employees, the committee was told that Finance Division has released sanction for regularization of 2,641 out of 2,943 posts.
Chairperson NCHD Razina Alam Khan briefing the panel said that besides various other challenges, developing countries had a major portion of their population illiterate, adding that in education, quality education deficit was also a main concern. Illiteracy puts a halt to developmental growth of a country and is a major reason of poverty in these countries, she added. The countries like Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and India had adopted non-formal education approach which benefited these nations in achieving their universal elementary education and literacy targets, she said.
She said that NCHD was established as task force with an aim to support government departments in achieving educational targets by filling the implementation gaps. The NCHD had successfully designed its education programs and directed many projects of non-formal education that can be materialized to achieve educational targets of Vision 2025, she added. "Currently, our formal education system is adding only 1% per annum in literacy rate. Through this pace and with 2.6% population growth rate, we will be able to achieve only 68% literacy rate till 2025," she said.
Briefing about NCHD's interventions she said that currently there are 5,567 feeder schools of NCHD across the country where 272,289 children are acquiring education. There are 6,000 adult literacy centers where 150,000 women are attaining literacy as well as vocational skills and moreover, they are proving helping hand as they have started their children getting enrolled in schools, she said. "The NCHD had 100 Madrassa Schools functional in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), Azad Jammu & Kashmir (AJK), Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) and Gilgit-Baltistan (GB). The Commission had constituted an advisory council on literacy and forum on non-formal education, which brought all stakeholders on a single table to work for the noble cause," she maintained.
National Training Institute (NTI) of NCHD had devised a strategy named "National Plan of Action" in collaboration with all the stakeholders to achieve educational targets of the Vision 2025, she maintained. "The accelerated learning programs and research studies to be utilized in improving non-formal education system would also be devised by the NTI experts," she briefed.
The chairperson NCHD stressed that non-formal education approach is the only way to achieve educational targets of the Vision 2025 and urged all stakeholders and government to support NCHD for the national cause of eradication of illiteracy in the country.
The meeting was attended by Mir Hasil Khan Bizenjo, Molvi Faiz Muhammad, Fida Muhammad, Muhammad Ayub, Haji Momin Khan Afridi, Nighat Mirza, Kulsoom Parveen, Senior Joint Secretary Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training Mushtaq Ahmed, Chairperson NCHD Razina Alam Khan, and Financial Advisor from the Finance Division Muhammad Bilal, besides others.
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