‘Only 5pc hearing-impaired children go to school in Pakistan’

Pakistan has more than one million deaf children of school age, yet only five per cent of them attend school, Richard Geary and Heidi Richard, founders of the Deaf Reach School and Training Centre, told Karachi Commissioner Muhammad Iqbal Memon during his visit to the school.

Geary said only the branches of their schools in Karachi, Hyderabad, Tando Allahyar, Sukkur and Shaheed Benazirabad were catering to the needs of the deaf community, providing a full circle solution, from education to skills training, teacher development programmes, parent training programmes, job placement and community inclusion. He said they were working on a digital literacy programme so that children who did not have access to school could benefit from online teaching.

Memon lauded the efforts of the school to provide quality education and technical training as per international standards to the deaf students and extended his full support and cooperation to the management of the school. He directed the Mukhtiarkar of Gulshan-e-Iqbal to resolve the parking issue faced by the school in consultation with the East District Municipal Corporation.