CDWP approves Rs8.2 billion projects

ISLAMABAD: The Planning Commission’s Central Development Working Party (CDWP) on Wednesday approved two projects worth Rs8.2 billion to support education sector in Pakistan under prevalence of COVID-19 pandemic.

The decision was made during a meeting chaired by Deputy Chairman Planning Commission Jehanzeb Khan. The development forum approved two mega projects to support education system in Pakistan under COVID-19 pandemic.

Senior officials from Planning Commission and federal ministries/divisions also participated in the meeting while representatives from provincial governments participated through video conference. Ministry of education and professional training presented two mega projects in CDWP meeting. First project namely “pandemic response effectiveness project for COVID-19” worth Rs4.9 billion was approved in the meeting. The project period of completion would be 24 months, the objective of this project is to prepare and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic in Pakistan to address significant disruptive impact that keep children, teachers and administrators out of school for prolonged period.

The project will focus on support schools and parents in distance learning activities, remote learning from TV/radio broadcast, virtual network and support policy changes and their implementation to increase the capacity of the education system to deal with future emergencies that contribute to school closures.

Second project of education presented in the meeting namely “response recovery resilience in education programming during COVID-19 by the Pakistan worth Rs3.3 billion was approved by CDWP. The period of completion of this project would be 20 months and this project would support short and medium term response and recovery needs under the COVID-9 pandemic, while establishing the technical and institutional capacity to build back a stronger and more resilience education system, with a focus on disadvantaged population in lagging areas in all provinces.