Education for all: A million to be targeted under literacy project

The project will include 667 <br /> functional literacy centres.

LAHORE: The Literacy and Non Formal Basic Education Department has planned to set up more than 660 functional literacy centres in the Punjab. The initiative aims to provide literacy to up to a million people aged 16 to 35 years.

The centres, set up under the Punjab Literacy Movement Project, will target youth belonging to the lower socio-economic strata.

The project will include 667 functional literacy centres and will offer literacy programmes to individuals in select tehsils.

Literacy and NFBE department Secretary Pervez Ahmad Khan said that the project would aim to improve literacy levels of the young cohort by 7 per cent in various stages.

The secretary said a Rs600 million budget had been allocated for the Punjab Literacy Movement Project in the current fiscal year’s development programme. “It is our foremost responsibility to provide literacy to individuals left out of the net of formal education and schooling,” he said. The key beneficiaries of the project would be children and individuals living below the poverty line, he said. Commending other non-government organisations working for education and literacy in the province, Khan said there was a need for greater liaison between the government and non-government sector.

As part of the inauguration, a new literacy school was inaugurated in Nankana Sahib on Monday. A statement issued by the department on Monday said that the project would look offer literacy programmes to under-privileged youth in the most financially deprived areas. The statement said the literacy schools would be set up in various districts based on the population of illiterate individuals there.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 26^th, 2014.