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Moot urges girls` empowerment through education

By Our Staff Correspondent 2017-11-09
HYDERABAD: Emphasising the need for girls` empowerment, speakers at an education festival on Wednesday said that without ensuring women literacy, this goal could not be achieved.

The festival titled `Empowering Girls, Empowering Pakistan` was attended by educators, writers, women teachers and over 200 girl students from 10 government girls` secondary schools of Matiari.

It was organised by the Sindh Community Foundation in collaboration with the Small Grants and Ambassadors Fund-SGAFP in Dr H.T. Sorley Hall, Bhitshah.

Naseer Mirza, a noted broadcaster, said Pakistan, especially Sindh, needed improvement in girls` education as indicators were not encouraging.

He paid tribute to Dadi Lila, who passed away recently and had worked for girls` education. He said that such events gave opportunity to expose the talent of girls to the outside world. In this society, education was the only tool which could save women from centuries-old social oppression.

Javed Hussain, head of the Sindh Community Foundation, said that status of secondary education of girls was not up to the mark as compared to boys. He said district Matiari was somewhat better, but more needed to be done.

Quoting recent reports on the status of girls` secondary education, he said those reports were not satisfactory in Sindh because of early marriages of girls, lack of awareness among parents and guardians, opportunity costs, poor school facilities and infrastructure, especially separate toilets for girls, and non-conducive environment for professional development of women staff.

He called for availability of transport for girls in remote areas.