Sindh succeeds in wooing US aid for schools, flood victims

SINDH – KARACHI – The hard work of the Sindh government to rehabilitate flood-affected schools has reaped benefits. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) has agreed to provide an additional funding of $4 million to the province for further enhancement of flood damaged schools.

USAID was providing the Sindh government with a total of $155 million to support the education sector in Sindh under the Sindh Basic Education Programme.

Under the said programme, the flood-affected schools would be reconstructed in various districts including Khairpur, Dadu, Jacobabad, Kambar-Shahdadkot, Sukkur, Larkana, Kashmore-Kandhkot, and Karachi.

The Sindh Education Programme will also support in enhancing reading literacy in schools, alleviating malnourishment in children and provide technical assistance to departments in order to increase their capacity. The total funding for this venture is $155 million, sources told Pakistan Today.

The goal of the Sindh Basic Education programme is to increase and sustain student enrolment in primary, middle and secondary schools in targeted geographical location in Sindh…..

Read more » Pakistan Today

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2012/07/07/city/karachi/sindh-succeeds-in-wooing-us-aid-for-schools-flood-victims/

We’re killing education

By Dr Javaid R Laghari

Excerpt;

…. Pakistan must invest foremost in education with renewed vigour. The lower education must focus on improving quality, while the HEC must be supported to raise Pakistan’s knowledge workers’ level to world standards. Any other direction will be suicidal for Pakistan’s education.

The writer is chairman of Pakistan’s Higher Education Commission. Email: jlaghari@hec. gov.pk

To read complete article » The News

India is likely a dangerous place for women

Visualizing Violence Against Indian Women

By Nandalal_Rasiah

(Via SepiaMutiny Newsfeed):  A Malayali civil engineer and  former software developer, Shemeer Padinzjharedil, came to a conclusion that many BPs have already done through deduction: India is likely a dangerous place for women relative to the Western world.  Inspired to debunk the results of a Thompson-Reuters poll of gender ‘experts’ perception of danger to women, where three of the five worst offenders were south asian countries, Shemeer thought the reported statistics would paint a different picture.  Given the survey  combined questions about statistics with reporting bias problems (sexual assault, trafficking, non-sexual assault) and factors (cultural and religious) for which one could combine statistics about which I would be more comfortable citing (maternal mortality, female literacy and other health stats), he faced a difficult task.  Given that the solid numbers are unambiguous, Shemeer decided against deconstructing this picture and sought, instead, to flesh it out with self-reporting by building a site where anyone can report violence: www.maps4aid.com  The site is in it’s infancy but you can already see some trends: centers of population and urbanized areas report the most violence regardless of the category.  A second site, blogs4aid, has handy bar graph breaking it out by state.  For 2010 you may find a few surprises:

Read more » Brown Pundits

SINDH: Schools, colleges to remain open in June

By: Syed Jafar Askari

KARACHI – The Sindh Education Department has decided that summer vacations will be observed in two months from July to August instead of June to July.

It is also decided that the female students will be awarded scholarships to enhance literacy rate among women segment of the society. These decisions were taken in a meeting of Steering Committee of Sindh Education Department, held on Saturday. Sindh Education Minister Pir Mazhar ul Haq presided over the meeting ….

Read more : The Nation

Pakistan remains a military-dominated rentier state

Failed state or Weimar Republic?

Pakistan remains a military-dominated rentier state, still committed to American and Gulf Arab alliances

By Omar Ali

A friend recently wrote to me that Pakistan reminded him of the Weimar republic; an anarchic and poorly managed democracy with some real freedoms and an explosion of artistic creativity, but also with a dangerous fascist ideology attracting more and more adherents as people tire of economic hardship and social disorder and yearn for a savior. Others (much more numerous than the single friend who suggested the Weimar comparison) insist that Pakistan is a failed state. So which is it? Is Pakistan the Weimar republic of the day or is it a failed state?

Poverty

While rich nations become richer, billions of people live in extreme poverty with short brutal lives. The moral challenge of our times is to eliminate extreme poverty. We need to steadily transform our world so that, by the end of the century. All nations should reach a decent literacy rate and adequate levels of employment.