Centre attempting to impose its curriculum on provinces: Sindh CM

KARACHI: Sindh Chief Minister Syed Murad Ali Shah said formulation of curriculum under the 18th Amendment is a provincial subject but the federal government wants to impose the Single National Curriculum (SNC) on the provinces unilaterally, adding that is why his government declined to adopt the curriculum.

The chief minister said this while talking to a 29-member delegation, belonging to the Punjab Assembly, who called on him at the CM House here on Wednesday. The delegation included 18 MPAs from PTI, six from PMLN and four from PPP.

To a question, the chief minister said most of the students in Sindh were receiving education in Sindhi medium. “Education in mother tongue is considered to be the most effective medium of teaching, therefore, our preference is to adopt the curriculum accordingly,” he said, adding that his government has already been working hard to overhaul the curriculum.

The CM said the federal government was trying to impose its curriculum unilaterally but we have already framed our own curriculum and will be improving it further with the passage of time.

To another question, Murad said in the last census, the population of Karachi was shown 16 million, which was wrong, therefore, he has been fighting the case for the city so that its actual population could be counted to get rights for them in the national resources.

Murad said the water shortage in the city is a genuine issue, adding Karachi gets water from two sources -- the Indus and the Hub Dam. He went on to stay that the country’s rivers were facing water shortage, therefore, the Indus River has become an unreliable source of water supply, while Hub Dam has a limited water resource, therefore, we have decided to tap the source of seawater by installing desalination plants. The donor agencies have agreed to finance the projects, he added.

About the law and order in Sindh, he said when the PPP came into power in Sindh, Karachi was declared as the sixth most dangerous city in the crime index but then a vigorous clean-up operation was launched, and the writ of the government was established and now the same city, Karachi is ranking 136th in the crime index of the world.

“We restored peace in the city first and then started reconstruction of dilapidated infrastructure of the city. We reconstructed and widened Shahrah-e-Faisal and Tariq Road for the first time after the tenure of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. We also constructed a number of other roads, flyovers and underpasses and still have to do a lot of work in the city,” he said.

The Sindh CM told the parliamentarians that his government has established NICVD, NICH and JPMC as the best healthcare hospitals in Karachi. “Our NICVD and JPMC’s Cyberknife treatment facility was providing best services free of cost. The NICVD is the only hospital in the region which conducts angiographies, angioplasties and bypasses free of cost and the Cyberknife has been providing treatment of cancer free of cost,” he said.

The chief minister invited the delegation to visit Thar and get firsthand experience of the work done by the Sindh government. “Now, Thar has become the electricity-producing town of the country and its credit goes to Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, who had initiated coal mining and coal-fire power projects which could not take place in those days, but the initial work was done,” he said.

Appreciating the MPAs from Punjab, he said such visits would help develop political coordination and exchange of views for strengthening the democracy in the country.