These days, Pakistani Government is keen to portray the country as the emerging economy of Asia. Pakistani economy has now one of the fastest growth rates in the world and Pakistani government is trying to emulate the success of neighboring India in outsourcing and Information Technology (IT). However, Pakistani leaders often fail to realize that the country has a very low rate of literacy.
In fact, Pakistan has the lowest literacy rate in the South and West Asian countries. Pakistan’s Federal Education Minister Lt Gen (R) Javed Ashraf Qazi, on Tuesday, provided the information in his fifty minutes briefing on Education Science and Technology to a Senate standing committee. According to the report published in the Pak tribune, the education minister said that they would soon get the correct literary statistics in light of National Education Census. The census was initiated in November 2005 and data has been collected from all the four provinces. The final result will be published in the internet. However, the education minister said that the provinces of Sindh and Balochistan had the lowest rate of literacy. The female literacy rate in these areas is only 18%.
The Minister (Mr. Qazi), stated that immediate measures should be taken to develop the present situation of education. The members of the standing committee also expressed their concern after hearing that Pakistan has a 45% school dropout rate.
The education minister said that there was no statistical record of the literacy rate of Pakistan till now. According to the census of 1998 the literacy rate was 46 percent but the PSL survey of 2004-5 showed a literacy rate of 53 percent.
There is a saying, “Education is the backbone of a nation.” Well, from that point of view, most of the South Asian countries have a weaker backbone. There is one exception- Srilanka, a country where more than 80% of the population is educated. Pakistan, is the seventh most populated country in the world. It has a long history of political instability, and the country had gone to direct and indirect confrontation with India so many times. Also a good portion of the people lives below poverty line.
I am not an economist but I believe very strongly that without investing in education no country can prosper economically. So, Pakistan government must invest in education sector and increase the rate of literacy significantly in the next 5-10 years if it really want to shine economically. With this low rate of literacy, it is impossible for Pakistan to sustain its high economic growth and become an emerging economic tiger.
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Posted by: Crystal | October 20, 2006 8:32 AM | Permalink to Comment