Zubair for teaching tolerance at educational institutes to prevent ‘mob violence’

KARACHI: Sindh Governor Muhammad Zubair has asked the educational institutions to teach religious harmony, respect for humanity and tolerance in addition to giving them education because a few days back, it was a group of ‘highly educated people’ who had killed one of their own colleagues inside their institute by acting as judges.

“A few days back, an incident of mob violence happened inside a higher education institute where highly educated people acted as judges and killed one of their own colleagues. Simple education is not enough in these circumstances. We call education as solution to all our problems but we also need character building, respect for humanity and religious tolerance to be taught at our educational institutions,” he told a fundraising ceremony of a charity school here in Karachi on Saturday.

The fundraising ceremony had been organised for the Baithak School Network (BSN), by the Society for Educational Welfare, which is running as many 138 informal schools and educational institutions throughout Pakistan for children working as labourers, beggars and those living on streets.

A large number of educationists, philanthropists, industrialists, businessmen, healthcare professionals and people from other walks of life pledged to donate millions of rupees for children who had passed out from various Baithak schools in Karachi.

The Sindh governor said that he was delighted to learn that street children and children working as labourers were also being taught how to live in the society through their character building as per Islamic teachings. He stressed that it was high time for us to teach our children to respect other religions and understand the worth of human lives.

“Unfortunately, we are promoting anarchy instead of harmony at our educational institutions. We need to respect each others’ views as well as people from other religions. There are also Hindus, Christians, Sikhs and Parsis living in this country and we need to teach our children about them as well so that they can also live as peacefully as we are,” he stressed.

The governor termed the Baithak School Network as ‘one of the success stories’ from Pakistan and asked the media to run it in the headlines instead of making ‘negative headlines’, regretting that positive and healthy activities were hardly promoted by the national media in the country.

“People are pledging to donate money for the Baithak School Network and I would urge them to pledge with open heart. This group of people is doing a great job and they need your support”, he urged the people attending the fundraising ceremony.

The Sindh governor announced that he would invite BSN office-bearers and children to the Governor House in next few days and they would be awarded for their performance and dedication for promoting education in the society while he would do whatever was possible to further the cause of education in the society.

Chairman of the BSN Advisory Board Jamshaid Ahmed said that the network of informal schools was promoting education among a class of children who belonged to the most unprivileged segment of the society, adding that they were striving for providing value-based, quality education to children whose parents could not send them to public and private schools.

“There are around 25 million out-of-school children and we are catering to only 16,000 such children at the moment. But our goal is to reach thousands more and in order to do that, we need the support of common people, who are sending their children to schools but never thought of out-of-school children,” he said.

President of the Baithak School Network thanked the Sindh governor and other participants in their fundraising activity and hoped that with their support, BSN would be educating one hundred thousand children by 2030 through a network of hundreds of schools in slums of the country.       

Millions of rupees were pledged for the Baithak School Network by the industrialists, businessmen and philanthropists.