Zardari calls meeting to discuss Seraiki province

Committee will consider changes to party manifesto.

KARACHI:

President Asif Ali Zardari has called a meeting of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) Manifesto Committee to consider including the formation of a Seraiki province in its list of campaign promises for the next elections, presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar said on Monday.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told a public gathering in Jalalpur Pirwala in southern Punjab on Sunday that such a province would be part of the party’s manifesto for the next elections. The committee, which is likely to meet next Monday, will consider other changes to the party manifesto, which was last reviewed in 2007 before the general elections, Babar said.

Also on Monday, the president chaired meetings on education and energy with the Sindh chief minister and ministers at Bilawal House. He instructed the provincial government to boost school enrolment and the quality of education provided, and to develop its own small power projects.

Briefing journalists, Babar said that Zardari had called another meeting within a month at which the relevant ministries would have to brief him on the progress made in the implementation of his directives.

Education

He said that the pathetic state of education became clear when the meeting on education was briefed that of the 11 million children of school-going age in the province, 4.5 million children were not enrolled in schools.

Twenty per cent of the province’s schools have no building, 45 per cent consist of only one or two rooms, over 60 per cent have no more than two teachers, and 60 per cent of schools do not have access to safe drinking water, the briefing was informed.

“The province is faced with an education crisis,” the president was quoted as saying. “This situation must not be allowed to continue and needs to be changed through structural improvements.”

Zardari tasked the education minister with preparing a comprehensive and workable plan to tackle the crisis. He told the Education Department to consider a management partnership with the private sector for efficient running of schools. He also sought ideas on innovative ways to raise funds and improve oversight of public schools.

“The situation points to some fundamental flaws in the system that needs to be addressed on an emergency basis,” Babar quoted the president as saying.

The president said that the Department for International Development, the British government’s foreign aid agency, had allocated over Rs11 billion (80 million pounds) for education in Sindh over the next five years and the funds would be administered through the Sindh Education Fund, which would be set up as a non-profit company under the Companies Ordinance. Assistance from the fund would be given only to those schools which fulfil certain criteria developed for the purpose.

The president asked the Education Department to gear up to meet the basic minimum criteria to be eligible for the DFID assistance. The president said funds for the improvement of rural schools could be diverted from each deh.

Energy

In the second meeting about the power and gas situation, President Zardari directed the Sindh government to develop its own power projects of under 50 MW, as provincial governments had been authorised to do since 2002. The meeting reviewed progress on an earlier directive for reactivation of abandoned gas fields in the province. The president also called for the setting up of captive power plants for selected industrial zones.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 15^th, 2011.