LAHORE - Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif on Saturday presided over a three-hour meeting to review progress on the School Reforms Roadmap.

Addressing the meeting, the chief minister said that reforms in the education system introduced by the Punjab government were producing results. He said that standard of education had improved after introduction of information technology in the education sector. He said the Punjab government outsourced 4,300 schools under the public-private partnership and enrolment of students and quality of education improved in these schools after the initiative. He said this model of the public-private partnership would be replicated further. He said that quality education was the right of every child and this right would be protected at any cost. He said that implementation of the roadmap of school reforms would be ensured. He said that enrolment from private schools to public schools had increased to 33 percent, while percentage of retention had increased by 57 percent but more hard work was needed to achieve enrolment targets. He said that merit was being ensured in every project of the Punjab government and hundreds of thousands of teachers had been recruited on merit. He said the Punjab Education Endowment Fund was a great project and over 200,000 deserving students had benefited from the fund. This project is the biggest in South Asia, he said.

The chief minister said the Punjab government had distributed education scholarships worth 12 billion rupees and by the end of this year the number of students who benefitted from this project would increase to 350,000. He said girl students of less developed districts of the province were getting scholarships from the Zewar-e-Taleem Project and more vouchers under this scheme would be distributed by 2018. He said this project would change education scenario in the province. He said “we should work as a team to achieve targets of the reforms roadmap”.

Managing Partner of DFID Sir Michael Barber said the Punjab government was proceeding with the roadmap in an excellent manner and an immense improvement had been noted in the enrolment and education quality. He said due to personal interest of Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif the roadmap was moving forward at a fast pace. He said Shehbaz had promoted merit and transparency in every field.

KHIDMAT CENTRES

Chief Minister Shehbaz Sharif presided over a meeting here on Saturday to review progress on establishment of Khidmat Centres in the province.

Addressing the meeting, the chief minister said resources were being used to provide best facilities to people and establishment of Khidmat Centres was a great step in this direction. He said until now 11 state-of-the-art Khidmat Centres had been established and such centres would be established in all districts. He said Khidmat Centres were operational in Rawalpindi, Faisalabad, Sargodha, Lahore, Sahiwal and Gujranwala. Land had been earmarked for these centres in the remaining districts, he said. At these centres, he said, people were getting 17 services under one roof and two more services would be added soon.

Adviser to Chief Minister Dr Umer Saif gave a detailed briefing about Khidmat Centres. He said a monitoring system had been developed to look after performance of Khidmat Centres. The chief secretary, Dr Umer Saif and secretaries of various departments were also present on the occasion.

message on Disaster Awareness Day

Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad  Shehbaz Sharif said on Saturday that public awareness was drastically needed to cope with natural disasters. “We need to work in the modern way to minimize damage of disasters,” he added. In his message on the National Disaster Awareness Day,  he said encouraging results could be obtained by utilizing modern technology of disaster management. He added effective measures were needed to minimize damage due to disasters.

He said effective response mechanism was needed to face disasters and trained human resource works effectively in the disaster management.

He said to save human life and property from disaster the Punjab Disaster Management Authority had been equipped with modern trends.

 

 

 

 

OUR STAFF REPORTER/APP