Promotion of education key to development of Sindh: Zubair

F.P. Report

KARACHI: Sindh Governor Muhammad Zubair has said that promotion of education and industrialization are keys to development and progress of Sindh.

He was addressing the ceremony of Green Crescent Trust at Governor House to support its around 800 charity and welfare projects in remote areas of the province.

“The government has its limitation when it comes to accelerating the pace of development but what it can do is facilitation of this process and this can be done best by promoting industrialization in the province,” said the governor on the occasion.

He said that wherever the private sector had been encouraged to do industrialization, it had helped a lot in creating a burgeoning middle class who actively took part in the process of development. “As the Sindh government is going to announce its new budget in a few days, it is my advice to give as much emphasis in the budget as much possible on promotion of education and industrialization,” he said.

He said that Thar had been the best example in Sindh where the government had facilitated the process of development through industrialization as now the best companies of the country had been working there to extract Thar coal and to establish power plants to use this coal for the very first time for energy production.

“It is because of private and non-governmental sector working there, the face of Thar is changing today with new educational, health care, and skill development facilities being  established there,” said Mr. Zubair. He praised the extensive network of schools and water supply projects of GCT in remote areas of the province like Thar where otherwise people didn’t have access to basic necessities of life.

The governor said it was pleasing for him to note that acute problem of water availability in Thar would be overcome owing to extensive work there by the NGOs like the GCT

Also speaking on the occasion, Chief Executive Officer of GCT Mr.Zahid Saeed said that Trust is working since 1995 and till now 153 schools of the GCT with enrolment of 29,000 students had been established in the most challenging locations of the province where earlier there was no educational facility for people. “Most of the students of GCT’s schools belong to such families whose elders are uneducated, he added. He said that GCT had to meet the recurring expense of Rs 30 million every year to run the network of its charitable schools in Sindh.

He said that plans were afoot to do water supply schemes in all 2300 villages of Thar area till the year 2020 and also  increase enrolment of students to 100,000. He especially thanked the Sindh Education Foundation for its all out support for school initiatives of the GCT all over the province.

Prominent industrialist Sardar Muhammad Yasin Malik said that government should focus on the projects being initiated in Thar for using underground saline water for cultivation of the otherwise barren land there.

The highlight of the night was special tableau by the students of the GCT’s school in Mithi who presented a performance based on folk music of the area to depict the process of development and progress in Thar with promotion of education and similar other projects.

Sindh Development and Planning Minister Mr.Saeed Ghani, FPCCI President Mr. Ghazanfar Bilour and other prominent names of business and industry also attended the event.