ISLAMABAD: Federal Minister for Planning, Development and Reform Ahsan Iqbal said on Monday that a month-long enrolment campaign would be launched on April 1 this year to ensure 100 percent enrolment of children in schools in the next three years and meet the universal primary enrolment targets.
Addressing a press conference after chairing a meeting on the national enrolment campaign here at the Ministry of Planning, Development and Reform, Iqbal said the prime minister and the chief ministers of all the provinces would lead the campaign to give it a broader national ownership. He said that academia, civil society, politicians, media and various local communities would be engaged to make the campaign a success.
Federal Minister for Education and Vocational Training Baleegh-ur-Rahman, education ministers of Balochistan and Gilgit-Baltistan and education officials from Punjab, Sindh and Azad Jammu and Kashmir also attended the meeting.
Iqbal said that 100 percent primary enrolment was the first goal. After achieving this goal, he said, the government would work on 100 percent enrolment in higher education institutions. He said the enrolment campaign was part of the government’s efforts to build the knowledge economy envisaged in the Vision-2025. He expressed the hope that 100 percent primary enrolment would be achieved before 2018 and asked the provincial governments to hold high-level meeting at the provincial level to finalise their strategies within a week. He said that district governments should hold meetings to finalise their roadmaps by March 22 to achieve 100 percent enrolment in schools. “All stakeholders should coordinate and synergise their efforts to achieve the 100 percent enrolment target,” he said. He said the enrolment campaign would boost routine enrolment in schools at the provincial level. He said the federal government would play a supportive and coordinated role to create national impact of this campaign.
Iqbal said that media, local communities, business fraternity and politicians could be mobilised to make this campaign a success. He said the Higher Education Commission (HEC) would be engaged to motivate university students to work as volunteers in this campaign. He stated, “The national enrolment campaign will add a new chapter to the efforts to eradicate ignorance from the country. The minister invited the media to play an active role to make the enrolment campaign a success, as part of its obligation to contribute to national development. He said the government would work to make this drive successful with a sense of mission.
Though education was a devolved subject under the 18th Constitutional Amendment, he said, the federal government couldn’t absolve itself of its responsibility to maintain national education standards by playing its supportive and facilitating role. He said that devolved sectors had key role in national development and the federal government could play an important role through coordination among various federating units to achieve the targets in these sectors.
He said the federal government was striving to lay strong foundations of knowledge economy and this aim could not be realised without educating the new generation of the country. He briefed the media about his visit to the United States and his participation in the Pakistan-US Strategic Dialogue. He said, “We negotiated the training of 10,000 Pakistani PhD scholars at the American universities to meet the growing faculty demands in the next 10 years.”
Separately, Iqbal said that Pakistan and Turkey had a huge potential for cooperation in the small and medium enterprise (SME) sector. He said that Pakistan could learn from the business models of the thriving SME sector in Turkey.
Talking to a Turkish delegation led by Turkish ambassador to Pakistan, Iqbal said that Vision-2025 focused on development of SMEs because this sector had a critical role to play in national development. He said the government was working on cluster development of many sectors, including SMEs, to make its products regionally and globally competitive. He suggested that the SME sector in Pakistan and Turkey could do matchmaking by launching joint ventures and called for a mechanism in this regard.
