Paying homage: Journalists, legislators pay tribute to Malala

Need for a secular syllabus urged in order to control Talibanisation.


Our Correspondent July 20, 2013
Another senior journalist Zubeida Mustafa touched upon the bleak state of education, and said that Pakistan is the second country after Nigeria which has the highest rate of children who are out of schools. PHOTO: REUTERS

KARACHI:


Paying tribute to Malala Yousafzai, speakers at a seminar on Women’s Education and Terrorism said on Friday that had the government taken immediate action against the Taliban when the girl was shot, they would have been able to control the extremists’ ideology seeping quickly in our society.


Senior Journalist Ghazi Salahuddin, speaking at the seminar organised by the South Asian Women in Media (SAWM)  and South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA) at the Karachi Press Club, said, “The government should have carried out an operation against the Taliban when the incident had taken place.”

Another senior journalist Zubeida Mustafa touched upon the bleak state of education, and said that Pakistan is the second country after Nigeria which has the highest rate of children who are out of schools.

She asked the new provincial education minister Nisar Khuhro that even though Taliban had blown up 500 schools, what was being done about the 12,000 ghost schools in the country, of which 7,000 schools were just in Sindh.

On the other hand, provincial education minister Nisar Khuhro, instead of speaking about Malala, attacked the former military dictator Pervez Musharraf and his regime.

“It is very easy to criticise the government. But why not anyone speaks about from where terrorism and its menace started,” he asked.

Earlier, PMA’s president Samrina Hashmi called for a secular syllabus which would help control Talibanisation in society. “Why are naats taught as part of the Urdu syllabus?” she asked.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 19th, 2013.

COMMENTS (4)

expaki | 11 years ago | Reply

@afzaal khan: Khan Sahib, I am a PUNJABI, and I arranged that my kids learn it, as best. I do pay couple of best teacher, who are teaching them Sindhi, beside English. Very certainly Arabic is has not part, as that creates mess in real life.

csmann | 11 years ago | Reply

Hardly a tribute if the minister doesn't even mention Malala. Anyway, by exposing the hypocrisy Malala wins again. And we know where sympathy and support for Taliban lies.

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