NCHD plans to educate prisoners to bring them into mainstream

Islamabad

Under a massive countrywide programme, the National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) has planned to educate the people kept in jails to help them become useful citizens on release by bringing them into the mainstream.

This was disclosed during the NCHD senior management's meeting presided over by chairperson of the commission Razina Alam Khan.

Ms Razina said making the convicts useful citizen and bringing them into the mainstream as respectable entities is the prime duty of the society and NCHD will not be failing in its duties.

She said the NCHD had already launched many successful programs of education and contributed to literate 3.84 million adults at its 164,190 adult literacy centres.

The NCHD chairperson said 5,949 feeder schools of Universal Primary Education with 392,869 enrolments were functional in remote, rural and underprivileged areas of the country mainly to address the core issues of access to education and to meet Sustainable Development Goals.

"Students of feeder schools are on the strength of nearby government schools. The curriculum of government schools is adopted for them," she said.

Ms Razina regretted that 57 million people in the country were illiterate, while 24 million children never go to school.

She also deplored of the 26 million children enrolled, only 33 per cent reached the matriculation level.

While discussing the grim educational statistic in Pakistan, the NCHD chairperson said the primary net enrolment was 72 per cent and out of it, 33 per cent were dropouts.

“Besides its regular programmes, we managed to have different educational/literacy and skill related projects through public-private schemes in collaboration with donors and provincial governments. These projects dealt with issues such as elimination of poverty, access to education, establishment of formal and non formal basic education institutions, setting up of IT centres, data collection activities and setting up of Skill Development Centres,” she said.

Ms Razina said the NCHD established 16 Malala Feeder Schools in 2013 for the earthquake hit areas in collaboration with I-Care.

"We initiated an innovative strategy “Own a School Initiative” and had been able to mobilize funds for 25 Feeder Schools from different philanthropists and 1,254 children were enrolled in them.400 skill based literacy centres were established under BBSYDP project in Sindh. Also, 10, 000 women were provided with sewing and stitching skill along with literacy skill," she said.

She said the NCHD launched mainstreaming of seminaries project to provide formal education in Madrassas and had established 100 Feeder Schools in Madaris of AJK, FATA, GB and Islamabad. “School Nutrition Program and “Every Child in School Initiative” covering 10 districts of KP is functional in collaboration with UNICEF,” she said.

The NCHD chairperson said in order to strengthen policy and Planning for retention through intensive enrolment campaign and dropout prevention mechanism, the commission had carried out a number of activities to mobilize the community in seven districts of KP and two Fata agencies with financial assistance of Unicef.

“Every Child in School Initiative (ECISI) is a Unicef supported initiative which is being implemented by School Education Department and NCHD-Punjab in 10 districts enrolling 51,559 out of school children,” she said.