Daily Times

Sir: An adult is generally known as an individual above the age of 21. Adult literacy is a concept, which says that no one can completely be happy or satisfied unless the person is educated. Literacy in adults involves teaching them about their rights and responsibilities as citizens. The main purpose of adult education programmes is to see that every individual in the state knows at least reading, writing and basic arithmetic; such knowledge is essential for everyone, especially in a democracy. In Pakistan, however, it has been observed that the implementation of literacy policy provisions has been low due to many causes like scarcity of resources, low capacity and political will. Adult literacy programmes need to be initiated immediately especially in the rural farming areas of the country. Agriculture, being one of the largest industrial sectors of the country, needs to be tackled by disseminating detailed information and literacy about modern ways of farming, irrigation, sowing, ploughing, reaping and fertilising the land for greater productivity of the sector. This sector needs education programmes to create jobs and grow as it contributes around 48 percent to the GDP and, therefore, literacy of farmers is essential.

With regards to the financing of adult literacy and non-formal education, it can be said that this area has been neglected by the government from the beginning. The current resource gap for literacy exceeds 80 percent. For such a densely populated country the government is providing hardly two billion rupees per annum when the need for literacy programmes is around 15 billion rupees per annum (as per the estimates of the National Plan of Action). According to the recent available statistics on adult literacy rates, the male literacy rate is 67 percent and female literacy rate is 42 percent. Around 56 million adults in Pakistan are illiterate amongst 66 million literate individuals. In order to improve adult literacy in Pakistan there are some issues that need to be addressed. These include capacity building, research, database creation, teachers training, learning material development, better literacy programmes and organisation of political will. These efforts will help give adult literacy the importance it needs in Pakistan and help this nation on the track towards development immensely.

M OSAMA AFNAN HANAFI

Karachi