Education is the only way through which we can fight the menace of terrorism.
ISLAMABAD: According to a Unesco report released in 2011 on Pakistan’s education situation, the country spends seven times more on defence than on education. This is a travesty and amounts to a massive misdirection of scarce resources, given that Pakistan has among the highest number of children of school-going age who are not in school. This is a matter of grave concern and should bring about a reordering of priorities by the government because, quite clearly, it needs to spend far more on education that it currently does.
Provincial and federal governments should immediately devise a strategy to take steps to boost the primary school enrolment rate, especially in provinces like Balochistan and the rural areas of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh and south Punjab. Education is the only way through which we can fight the menace of terrorism.
Hafiz Muhammad Irfan
Published in The Express Tribune, March 6th, 2011.
