Pakistan Association for Adult and Continuing Education (Pacade) in collaboration with United Nation Educational, Scientific & Cultural Organisation (Unesco) held a national consultative meeting on statistics, policies, programmes and methodologies regarding literacy promotion in the country here on Saturday.
Director Unesco Jorge Sequeria who was chief guest on the occasion, made a comprehensive representation of his organisation's efforts, assessment, monitoring programmes regarding literacy.
He emphasised the need for a scientific assessment of the literacy data and added that an authentic and updated date base on literacy should be developed with any easy to all stakeholders.
Speaking on the occasion, Chief of National Commission for Human Development's (NCHD) Literacy Programme, Iqbal-ur-Rehman informed the participants about his commission's literacy programmes.
He said that NCHD was currently operating 16,000 adult literacy centres throughout the country and added that number of such centres would be increased to 50,000 next year.
President Pacade Inayatullah stressed the need for making concerted efforts to develop an accurate and comprehensive database regarding literacy and primary education, adding that Pacade in collaboration with ministry of education, NCHD, Unesco, provincial literacy departments and NGOs would undertake the ambitious task soon.