Demand to keep girls education as priority

PESHAWAR: The civil society organizations on Monday demanded the next KP government to carry pursue policies to compensate for the loss of girls’ education due to the flood crisis.

The demand was made at a press conference arranged by Blue Veins, a non-governmental organization, and Pakistan Education Champion Network (PECN) working for promoting girls’ education.

The speakers asked the upcoming KP government to allocate more budgetary resources to strengthen access to education, especially for vulnerable girls affected by humanitarian crises as well.

It was pointed out that there are 33,464 government schools for 5.45 million children in KP and the recent floods have damaged about 1,500 government schools.According to a government report on KP Flood Damages & Assessments, Rs 9,150 million is amount is required for the restoration of these educational facilities.

Qamar Naseem, Programme Manager of Blue Veins, said: “Recent floods and resulting humanitarian crisis highly affected the education sector. He said the upcoming government must take forward the commitment for improved access to education for girls and make efficient resource allocation and take equitable policy actions.”

Sana Ahmad, Provincial Coordinator of Child Rights Movement, KP, said: “Bringing 2.9 million out-of-school girls of KP as reported in a survey in 2021, should be the main target and indicator for social and economic development.

Sustainable allocation of funds and efficient spending are the key strategies to catalyze the transformative potential of girls’ education.”She said there are total of 4.7 million out-of-school children in KP and according to the Elementary and Secondary Education Department, over 15,000 additional government schools are for the enrolment of such children.

Iqra Seemab, Project Coordinator, Blue Veins: said “Humanitarian responses that ignore girls’ education leave generations of girls less equipped to recover from crises and entrench gender inequalities. There is a strong consensus that gender equality in education should remain a priority for all.”

She said the girls-education, inclusive humanitarian and non-humanitarian response and policies are the collective responsibility of all the stakeholders, adding we hope enhancing the girls’ access to secondary education will remain at the heart of strategies and programmes of the upcoming government.