Khalida Niaz
I come across a picture of a minor girl’ kicking a football in a news group last night. A news item about speaker National Assembly Asad Qaiser announcing free education to the girl also followed the picture.
The picture was of Asma Hafiz from South Waziristan and had gone viral last year. Ms Hafiz belongs to remote Tanai area of South Waziristan and is a student of fourth class. The picture was widely shared on social media last year and also casted positive light on the entire region.
However, at first I thought that the girl was lucky to be able to receive free education. Then my mind veered to thousands other females from the same area who cannot peruse their studies due to absence of schools and poverty.
Mr Speaker, this is really good of you to bear responsibility of educating a talented individual like Asma. But in reality, it is the right of every girl to be able to pursue her studies, because education is the responsibility of the state.
Unfortunately, the literacy rate in the tribal districts, especially for girls, is still very low, for various reasons. One of the main reasons for this is the poverty tribesmen are living in. There is a lack of facilities in schools and other educational institutions. In many school teachers are getting their salaries at home without bothering to teach their students.
On the other hand, all political parties make tall claims of improving standards of education in this country. However, when they are in government, they do very little to improve educational standards. Something similar happened under the rule of the Pakistan Tehrik Insaf’s rule where education like all other sectors seems to be in turmoil.
Out of school children in KP
A Benazir Income Support Program (BISP) survey put the number of out of school children in 5 to 16 years in KP at 4.7 million. About a million of out of school children were in KP, while 2.9 million females were out of school in across the province.
The surveys also revealed that 65.2pc of people were forced to keep their children out of school due to poverty, while 15.2pc attributed it to low quality of education. Besides 12.1pc of out-of-school children were engaged in child labor. 3.8pc were out of school and 3.7pc were out of school due to health problems.
This is huge task for the government to get these children into schools. But when and how these children are going back to schools is anybody’s guess.
As far as the tribal districts are concerned, most of the girls are deprived of education even in this modern age. The government needs to reform the educational institutions as well as change the mindset of the people. Without changing the thinking, even providing educational facilities will do little good.
Though Asma Hafiz get her right education after a picture of her gone viral. But what should the millions other girls of tribal areas should do to educate themselves.
