KARACHI: Sindh Local Government minister Saeed Ghani has said the government and affluent people are under a solemn obligation to fully back the sincere charities striving hard to spread education in Pakistan.
He stated this while speaking at the OSP 2024 Fun Gala event the non-profit Green Crescent Trust (GCT) organised at a holiday resort to entertain its over 1200 orphaned children enrolled in its charitable schools in Karachi and suburbs. The GCT’s donors and concerned philanthropists, eminent businessmen, and industrialists attended the ceremony who generously donates to the drive to educate children from deprived communities.
Ghani told the audience at the event that Pakistan could progress at an accelerated pace only after eradicating the issue of illiteracy in the country in the shortest possible time. He said that Pakistan’s development and advancement would remain an unfulfilled dream without enrolling out-of-school children in the country. He said that imparting quality education to all the children in the country was the solemn duty of the government, but the latter failed to fulfil this constitutional obligation.
The Local Government Minister opined that bona fide charities like the Green Crescent Trust, which embarked upon the mission of providing quality schooling to children from underprivileged communities, had been shouldering an important responsibility of the government. The government and concerned philanthropists should extend the fullest support to such non-profits in the education sector to jointly wage the struggle against illiteracy in the country, he added. He appreciated that the GCT had so far established 170 schools in remote and less-privileged areas of Sindh, with an enrolment of over 32,800 students from deprived families. Ghani urged the concerned donors to keep supporting the GCT’s drive to enroll out-of-school children in Sindh.
The number of schools the GCT operates and the children it enrolls should keep on increasing to tackle the issue of illiteracy in the shortest possible time, he said. He told the audience that his grandparents had very limited economic resources at their disposal, but even then, they ensured that his father received a proper education, which in turn also didn’t make any compromises in educating his children. He stated that his ancestors’ financial hardships were overcome solely due to a generational shift, as his elders’ prioritized education.
The Local Government Minister encouraged the orphaned students present at the event to pursue their education wholeheartedly to secure their families’ economic prosperity, as he did.
After witnessing impressive speeches and other presentations by the students at the event, he said the children passing out from the GCT schools could become future leaders of Pakistan as qualified scientists, economists, technologists, educationists, and civil servants.
Copyright Business Recorder, 2024