Education Department Punjab has started classes for eunuchs in Multan under the first pilot project of its kind in Pakistan at Government Girls Comprehensive Higher Secondary School from 7th July.
First time in Pakistan, classes for the trans community in Multan have been started by the Punjab Education Department at Government Girls Comprehensive Higher Secondary School where transgender will be imparted education from primary to FA.
The transgender community was enthusiastic and said our community should be educated to improve their style of living and make every effort for themselves and their homeland.
On this occasion, Education Secretary South Punjab Dr. Ehtesham Noor said that after getting an education, Transgender will now be able to serve society by becoming independent and educated citizens. So far, 20 Transgenders have joined the pilot project as students. Books, uniforms and all educational facilities will be provided free of cost and their safety will also be ensured. In Bahawalpur, and DG Khan schools will be opened in the next phase, Ehtesham Noor said.
“We have been running a regular campaign for this project for a long time,” he said. We had to inform the eunuch community that an educational institution was being opened for them, but we did not understand how to do it. We started talking to a lot of transgender people to tell us how to reach out to people in their community.
According to Dr Ehtesham Anwar: ‘We were advised to make a video because the eunuch will not see or read the advertisement in the newspaper, so make a video which we will send to the WhatsApp groups created by this community, after which That’s what we did, and as a result, we got 18 transgender people who wanted to go to school.
When we spoke to these 18 people, we learned that they would go to four levels, some of whom have never been to school. We put them at the primary level. Similarly, we have categorized some elementary, some secondary, and some transperson as higher secondary.
He said that a year and a half ago, the first transgender lecturer was recruited at Quaid-e-Azam University. Her name is Ayesha Mughal and she is currently teaching at Islamabad University. We also brought them here and asked them how they completed their education, what problems they faced, and so on.
He was also asked how we can start this work. From this, we learned that to date only three eunuchs have reached M.Phil. Some did MA while no one reached Ph.D. The other was Alisha Shirazi, who lived in Islamabad, but we invited her to Multan as a consultant to work with us on the project. They helped us reach out to the transgender community.
Dr. Ehtesham said: “Most transgender people learn at puberty, after which most families do not accept such children. They hide from everyone, do not educate them, and do not allow them to learn any skill. And some of those who are studying drop out in the middle of their education is dropped. We will introduce the Accelerated Learning Program (ALP) for these students, ie we will give LOST classes to those who are a little bit literate in a year, but even in those students one, There will be three to four classes a year which we think they can complete a course of four classes in a year.