Daily Times

The entire purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows and when someone is deprived from the essence of getting education then these mirrors are shattered into million pieces that might cause turbulence and pain around its surroundings. I don’t want to sound cliched by saying education is the basic right for every child around us, it is the passport for our future and the future lies to them who prepare for it today. Since we are the certain segment of a society who are educated and can come up with some pertinent schemes to make our education deprived children educated so let us us all put our thinking caps and think for a moment how we as society members can help in improvising education sector in our society. I can presume that most of us will say that it is the responsibility of the government to improve education sector. Yes I agree to the extent that government is already contributing it’s bit but keeping Pakistani scenario in focus this is not a cakewalk.

It’s true that education sector needs to cover a lot of ground but it’s not like we can’t teach an old dog new tricks. There is so much room for improvement when it comes to educate the illiterate. We have always bashed government for not taking steps at facilitating the illiterate to receive education but recently there is a massive shift in terms of paradigm of increasing education budget by Punjab government for the year 2016-17. A major lion’s chunk of 168.9 billion has been allocated to social sector development programme in which education has been allotted Rs 73.3 billion.

The Rs 73.3 billion allocation for education includes Rs 47.76 billion plus foreign aid of Rs 87.5 million for school education, Rs 17.218 billion for higher education, Rs 962 million for special education,and Rs1.9 billion for literacy. One should appreciate the fact that finally government has taken education quite seriously unlike the past. The increase in the recent budget shows the seriousness of the government in eradicating illiteracy in its province.

Nomads are typically known as gypsies and oddhs in our society. They are already being deprived of CNIC because they don’t have permanent address. The idea of education seems like a mere dream for them since they are also being deprived of the basic facilities. Most of the adults among them spend their lives working as labourers on construction sites; the children beg or are scavengers. It’s heart wrenching to see them begging on the streets when they also deserve normal life like our own children

I have recently witnessed a top government civil servant working for the betterment of the nomads by providing them with education at Individual capacity. Commissioner Sargodha Nadeem Mehboob has changed the norms of traditional government way by educating the nomad children at their doorsteps. He has worked under the umbrella of Chief Minister’s vision by providing the nomads with 11 non formal and basic education centres where 335 nomad children are getting education. Eradicating illiteracy leads to empowerment. Keeping this in view four centres have been opened through Literacy department in existing buildings in the district where 127 nomads are combating illiteracy and learning new avenues.

Likewise Bhakkar has 2 centres where 76 nomads children are enriching their young minds with knowledge, whereas with 2 centre in Mianwali 45 children are paving their ways towards betterment. In district Khoshab 3 centres have been formed where 87 young kids have been registered so far. What is more encouraging to talk about is that the centres are fully equipped and the students are taught in a very a respectable manner that is a key factor too in their grooming.

I have also spoken to the families of the nomad kids and they are gleeing with the fact that their future generation is carving a niche for themselves instead of learning from school of hard knocks. This is a change of an art phenomena, instead of neglecting nomads right government has actually started paying attention towards their basic rights. With these small chunks of change we can empower our most vulnerable communities and lead them to a better future.