NCHD Establishes 6000 Literacy Centers Across Country

ISLAMABAD, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th May, 2018 ) :National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) has established around 6000 literacy centres under PC-I across 91 districts of the country with an aim to improve Human Development Indicators during last year.

Talking to APP, NCHD official, Rai Riaz Hussain said the commission has enrolled around 145,761 learners in its ongoing literacy programme. The project covers all the four provinces Punjab, Sindh, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Balochistan and the federally administered areas including Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK), Gilgit Baltistan (GB), Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) and Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), he added.

Rai Hussain said NCHD, being the national lead agency for literacy in Pakistan, has been working to improve literacy situation in the country and to contribute towards Vision-2025 and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

Commenting on the progress of the project, he said the project is working successfully as 200 staff members had been trained to execute the project while 600 Local Area Supervisors had also been hired and trained to assist 6000 teachers that were appointed to impart education under the programme.

He said the designed literacy centres were made functioned just after the completion of the teachers' training while the local area supervisors mostly comprising of women were trained for five days.

NCHD, National Program Coordinator, Syed Akbar Ali told APP that Pakistan was facing a huge challenge of widespread illiteracy with around 64 million adult (10+ age) illiterates and 5.2 million out of school children of Primary age (5-9) group in the country.

According to the Economic Survey of Pakistan 2015-16, he said, the overall literacy rate of the country was 58 percent while the literacy rate of rural areas was 49 percent against 74 percent in urban areas.

Pakistan is one of the least literate countries in Asia and the fourth largest contributor to the world's non-literate population, he added. He said the government is well aware of the situation and has taken important initiatives particularly one of the goals of Pakistan Vision-2025, to achieve 90 percent national literacy rate by the year 2025.

NCHD, since its inception, had established 164,190 Adult Literacy Centres across the country and admitted about 3.84 million adult learners (mostly women). It also covered 134 districts of the country and provided 15 million books to the learners while 3.5 million students had graduated till 2013, he added.