Comment by Riaz Haq on May 19, 2020 at 10:53am

#WorldBank to aid #Pakistan in creating new model for non-formal #education that combines #literacy, #labor #market skills, life #skills development for uneducated and illiterate children, youth and young adults in selected districts of #Punjab and #Sindh https://www.dawn.com/news/1555172


The government has been developing the new roadmap for the country’s education system under the new leadership since the summer of 2018. The education ministry at federal level and education departments at provincial levels have unanimously said that out-of-school children is one of the critical issues that needs to be addressed.

The proposed project will be built on the existing initiatives on out-of-school children, supported by development partners including Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), USAID, and Unicef, and it will be implemented in collaborative efforts with these agencies.

Despite the urgency of the issues, the federal and provincial governments’ interventions on non-formal education is limited. Due to the daunting challenges in the public education, the government’ emphasis of educational development is on improving the public education systems.

While the governments mainly aim to address out-of-school children by increasing access to and retention in public education, there are still service delivery gaps which results in out-of-school children. The proposed interventions are to fill in the gaps.

The project is also aligned with the international agenda including the Susta­inable Development Goals (SDGs).

The government’s priority on addressing out-of-school children has been aligned with the SDG targets and is supported by the development partners.

The project will offer Accelerated Learning Programmes (ALPs) to out-of-school children at primary school age (age eight to 10 years) and secondary school age (age 10-16 years) through a non-formal education model with the aim to facilitate mainstreaming of those children to the formal school system.

In Pakistan, primary schools accept new students at age five to seven years, and children at age eight and above typically find it difficult to enter formal primary schools.

To support those who miss the entry to primary schools, the ALP primary (ALP-P) has been developed including curricula, corresponding teaching and learning materials, and systems for training and assessment.

The programme has been approved in Punjab and Sindh provinces under Literacy Department (LD) and School Education and Literacy Department (SELD) respectively.

The project will conduct a rapid survey of out-of-school children and conduct enrollment and awareness campaigns in the villages.

The programme allows children to complete five years of the primary education with approximate 1,250 hours of learning, which usually take 24 to 36 months depending on the set up of Non-Formal Education (NFE) service delivery. Students will be able to sit in the class fifth School Leaving Examination upon the completion of the program and officially obtain a class fifth certificate.

Comment by Riaz Haq on June 26, 2020 at 7:11pm

Bilawal repeats challenge to govt on hospitals

https://www.thenews.com.pk/print/677550-bilawal-repeats-challenge-t...

Chairman PPP Bilawal Bhutto Zardari Wednesday repeated his challenge to the government on hospitals saying that it had been 72 hours since he had challenged the PTI to name a government hospital on a par with the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases (NICVD) they have made in last nine years.

Bilawal tweeted his challenge and said he was still awaiting a response from the PTI to name any government hospital, which they had built in last nine years.

"It’s been 72 hours since I challenged PTI to name ONE government hospital they have made in the last 9 years that can compete with any of the hospitals they are trying to steal from Sindh; like NICVD. Still waiting.”

He also posted the pictures of 10 hospitals across Sindh which provide free of cost treatment to all including the National Institute of Cardiovascular Diseases, Karachi; Chest Pain Unit, Lyari; NICVD, Khairpur; NICVD, Tando Muhammad Khan; NICVD, Mithi; NICVD Larkana; NICVD, Nawabshah, NICVD, Sujjur; NICVD, Sehwan; and NIVCD, Hyderabad.

Comment by Riaz Haq on July 8, 2020 at 4:49pm

Pakistan Literacy rate increased by only 2pc in last four years

https://www.dawn.com/news/1563338


Pakistan has not made any tangible improvement in literacy rate which increased only 2pc during the last four years and at present stands at 60pc.

“A literacy rate of only 60pc considerably limits opportunities towards acquiring skills and technical knowledge for higher productivity and better-earning levels,” says Economic Survey released on Thursday.

It said according to the Pakistan Social and Living Standards Measurement (PSLM) Survey 2018-19, the literacy rate of the population (10 years and above) is 60pc compared to 58pc in 2015-16.

“The literacy rate is higher in urban areas (74pc) than in rural areas (51pc),” read the survey. Province-wise analysis suggests that Punjab has the highest literacy rate with 64pc followed by Sindh and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (excluding the merged tribal areas) with 57pc, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (including merged areas) with 55pc and Balochistan with 40pc.

The Economic Survey said large investments in education access and quality are required to obtain the objective of educated and skilled human resources, along with comprehensive planning, removal of gender inequalities, and enforcing more accountability in the sector.

Education plays a leading role in improving the economic condition of the country and is a vital investment for human and economic development.

The survey while pointing out overall assessment in education sector said that overall education situation based on institutes, and teachers, have shown a slight improvement. It said the total number of enrolments during 2017-18 was recorded at 51 million compared to 47.6 million during the same period last year, which shows an increase of 7.1pc.

The survey while highlighting uniform education system, said that present government is making efforts to introduce single national curriculum with the aim to eliminate the disparity between curriculums, facilities, medium of instruction, and have a fair and equal opportunity for all children to receive a high-quality education.

Phase-I of single national curriculum (for class 1-5) has been developed, and its implementation would be completed by March 2021. Similarly, phase-II of single national curriculum (for class 6-8) would be ready by March 2021 and implemented by March 2022, while the phase-III curriculum (for class 9-12) would be ready by March 2022 and implemented by March 2023.

While discussing, Net Enrolment Rates Net Enrolment Rates (NER), primary level refers to the number of students enrolled in primary schools of age 6 to 10 yea group, the survey said that NRE saw slight improvement as it was 66pc in 2015-16 and now for year 2018-19 it was recorded 66pc.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 11, 2020 at 1:19pm

Social Safety Program Amid COVID19 Pandemic:


https://www.cgdev.org/blog/using-what-you-have-scale-payments-covid...

India
India is able to reach a high percentage of households through the combination of multiple programs including food rations, pensions, LPG cooking gas subsidies, food-for-work programs, farmer subsidies and making transfers to holders of Aadhaar-linked Jan Dhan accounts. Already, this approach appears to have been able to support quite a high proportion of poor households by scaling up food rations and various financial transfers. Initial survey results suggest that the system has provided material assistance, although some difficulties have been reported in cashing out payments and using the funds to purchase supplies.

In addition to the federal government, many states have announced their own programs to help people who fall through the system, especially migrants. But states face hard budget constraints due to expenditure ceilings imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act. Although the central government has allowed states to borrow up to 50 percent of their yearly credit needs upfront, the current uncertainty may prevent them from significantly expanding the range, scope, and scale of social assistance programs.

Lessons so far: The architecture of direct benefit transfers and JAM facilitates both scale-up and portability of benefits. But it is not possible to get an integrated view across programs which hinders coordination between the central and state-level initiatives. Many people fall through the cracks, especially migrants whose place of current residence does not match their registration location. In crises that disrupt supply chains there is an important role for efficient in-kind systems, but these have to be designed to ensure portability across states.

Pakistan
Building on the platform for BISP, the main social safety net program, Pakistan has announced a major scaleup of financial assistance to people affected by COVID-19. The Ehsaas Emergency Cash program distributes cash to 12 million families whose livelihood is severely impacted by the pandemic or its aftermath. People apply for the benefits through mobile phones. Their claim is assessed, which can include a check against databases, linking records with the national ID number. If they are approved, they can collect their benefit, after biometric authentication, at one of 17,000 cash disbursement centers that have been set up. From its inception in early April, cash has reportedly reached about one quarter of those entitled to the transfer, indicating a significant degree of state capacity to scale up transfers quickly.

Lessons so far: Pakistan is able to use its ID system and mobiles to initiate a large-scale centrally managed transfer program to uniquely identified and verified recipients. Because of the links with the National Socio-Economic Register and several other databases, the government can apply a range of exclusion rules to help target the transfers without making beneficiaries go through time-consuming application and verification procedures. Drawing on its past experience disbursing flood relief in 2007, Pakistan is also using mobile technology to offer recipients a choice of providers, although special payment points are needed because of low financial inclusion. It is not known how easily people are able to purchase supplies with their financial grants.

Bangladesh
Bangladesh has announced a range of programs but has not yet begun to implement them, and faces questions on how it will proceed. Some programs will be able to disburse through mobile money accounts, but many will not. There are also questions about the resilience of the mobile agent network: many agents provide service as a side business while their main income is from small shops, including in markets. They may not find it worthwhile to offer cash-out services if they are not able to open for normal business.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 11, 2020 at 1:20pm

WHO Director-General's opening remarks at the media briefing on COVID-19 - 7 September 2020

https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-openi...

Pakistan deployed the infrastructure built up over many years for polio to combat COVID-19. Community health workers who have been trained to go door-to-door vaccinating children for polio have been utilized for surveillance, contact tracing and care.

There are many other examples we could give, including Cambodia, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, Rwanda, Senegal, Spain, Viet Nam and more.

Many of these countries have done well because they learned lessons from previous outbreaks of SARS, MERS, measles, polio, Ebola, flu and other diseases.

That’s why it’s vital that we all learn the lessons this pandemic is teaching us.

Although Germany’s response was strong, it is also learning lessons.

I welcome the announcement by Chancellor Angela Merkel over the weekend that her government will invest 4 billion euros by 2026 to strengthen Germany’s public health system.

I call on all countries to invest in public health, and especially in primary health care, and follow Germany’s example.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 11, 2020 at 1:21pm

Social Safety Program Amid COVID19 Pandemic:


https://www.cgdev.org/blog/using-what-you-have-scale-payments-covid...

India
India is able to reach a high percentage of households through the combination of multiple programs including food rations, pensions, LPG cooking gas subsidies, food-for-work programs, farmer subsidies and making transfers to holders of Aadhaar-linked Jan Dhan accounts. Already, this approach appears to have been able to support quite a high proportion of poor households by scaling up food rations and various financial transfers. Initial survey results suggest that the system has provided material assistance, although some difficulties have been reported in cashing out payments and using the funds to purchase supplies.

In addition to the federal government, many states have announced their own programs to help people who fall through the system, especially migrants. But states face hard budget constraints due to expenditure ceilings imposed by the Fiscal Responsibility and Budget Management Act. Although the central government has allowed states to borrow up to 50 percent of their yearly credit needs upfront, the current uncertainty may prevent them from significantly expanding the range, scope, and scale of social assistance programs.

Lessons so far: The architecture of direct benefit transfers and JAM facilitates both scale-up and portability of benefits. But it is not possible to get an integrated view across programs which hinders coordination between the central and state-level initiatives. Many people fall through the cracks, especially migrants whose place of current residence does not match their registration location. In crises that disrupt supply chains there is an important role for efficient in-kind systems, but these have to be designed to ensure portability across states.

Pakistan
Building on the platform for BISP, the main social safety net program, Pakistan has announced a major scaleup of financial assistance to people affected by COVID-19. The Ehsaas Emergency Cash program distributes cash to 12 million families whose livelihood is severely impacted by the pandemic or its aftermath. People apply for the benefits through mobile phones. Their claim is assessed, which can include a check against databases, linking records with the national ID number. If they are approved, they can collect their benefit, after biometric authentication, at one of 17,000 cash disbursement centers that have been set up. From its inception in early April, cash has reportedly reached about one quarter of those entitled to the transfer, indicating a significant degree of state capacity to scale up transfers quickly.

Lessons so far: Pakistan is able to use its ID system and mobiles to initiate a large-scale centrally managed transfer program to uniquely identified and verified recipients. Because of the links with the National Socio-Economic Register and several other databases, the government can apply a range of exclusion rules to help target the transfers without making beneficiaries go through time-consuming application and verification procedures. Drawing on its past experience disbursing flood relief in 2007, Pakistan is also using mobile technology to offer recipients a choice of providers, although special payment points are needed because of low financial inclusion. It is not known how easily people are able to purchase supplies with their financial grants.

Bangladesh
Bangladesh has announced a range of programs but has not yet begun to implement them, and faces questions on how it will proceed. Some programs will be able to disburse through mobile money accounts, but many will not. There are also questions about the resilience of the mobile agent network: many agents provide service as a side business while their main income is from small shops, including in markets. They may not find it worthwhile to offer cash-out services if they are not able to open for normal business.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 11, 2020 at 4:25pm

Inside Pakistan’s COVID-19 Contact Tracing
Detective work is at the heart of efforts to fight the pandemic. Will it be enough?

By Niha Dagia


https://thediplomat.com/2020/07/inside-pakistans-covid-19-contact-t...


How Can We Make Contact Tracing Successful?

To identify as many contacts as possible and as fast as possible takes a large-scale organized mechanism. According to the United States Centers for Disease Control, the staff required for contact tracing varies depending on several factors including the daily tally of cases as well as the number of contacts who have been identified, isolated, notified, and advised to monitor symptoms and practice social distancing.

With local transmission varying between 95 to 98 percent across provinces, Pakistan lacks the capacity to investigate and trace all suspected cases.

But the Polio Eradication Initiative (PEI) has been on the frontline in the fight against the pandemic ever since its assets — including surveillance, data, and communication capabilities — were rerouted by the government in March 2020.

Their surveillance system has been adopted for COVID-19 contact tracing, tracking the disease’s spread, and creating awareness on prevention and containment.

Active surveillance for influenza-like illness (ILI), severe acute respiratory infections (SARI), and suspected COVID-19 cases has been integrated into the ongoing acute flaccid paralysis (AFP) active and passive surveillance system used in the fight against polio.

For contact tracing to work, the community needs to be involved. Since polio staff are already trained for door-to-door campaigns and carrying out risk perception in the community, it is now mobilizing defense against the fast-spreading virus.

“We have found significant positives amongst those traced via contact tracing and thus it has impacted on reducing further spread via self isolation, education and sensitization of the contacts,” said Dr. Sultan. “Quantification is sometimes not easy, but is being analyzed to see if a numerical value could be assigned with confidence.”

For a country that lacks a functioning healthcare system, its only defense against the virus is to contain the spread. Success will depend on the network of contract tracers, working behind the scenes to map out the pandemic in Pakistan.

Comment by Riaz Haq on September 12, 2020 at 6:24pm

Pakistan Reading Project declared int’l literacy program of year


https://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/2020/09/11/pakistan-reading-projec...

The United States Library of Congress Friday announced the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) literacy programme, “Pakistan Reading Project,” as the 2020 recipient of the International Literacy Programme of the Year.

According to a press statement issued here by the US Embassy, over the past seven years, and working in tandem with Pakistani education officials, USAID’s Pakistan Reading Project has improved the reading skills of 1.7 million Pakistani students by delivering reading instructional materials to classrooms, training teachers in new instruction techniques, and encouraging schools to dedicate more classroom time for reading.

This early grade literacy project has also worked closely with the government of Pakistan to improve policies and systems for early grade reading across national, provincial, and local levels, said the statement.

“We’re very honoured and pleased that the Pakistan Reading Project is this year’s Library of Congress recipient of this International Literacy Award,” said USAID/Pakistan Mission Director Julie Koenen.

“The programme has proved to be a cornerstone of our partnership with Pakistan in education by increasing the literacy rates across the country and improving the reading of so many Pakistani students,” said Koenen.

In 2013, the Library of Congress created the Literacy Awards to honour organizations working to promote literacy and reading in the United States and internationally. The project’s implementing partner, the International Relief Committee, will receive $50,000 from the Library of Congress for winning this.

--------


Pakistan Reading Project’s strategy is threefold: improve learning environments for reading in the classroom, advance policies and systems for reading instruction and rally community-based support for reading. In doing so, the project intends to reach 1.3 million students in grades one and two with reading interventions, not to mention training more than 23,000 teachers in reading instruction and developing reading curricula for more than 100 collegiate teaching programs.

From scholarships and grants for students pursuing teaching degrees to mobile bus libraries that bring books directly to children and their communities, the Pakistan Reading Program aims to comprehensively integrate reading into the lives of Pakistani children. The holistic approach of incorporating reading into both the institutional and communal lives of Pakistanis ensures the sustainability of the project’s efforts. In this way, children in Pakistan will be developmentally prepared for educational challenges they will face throughout their lives and consequently better able to pursue their goals and break from the cycle of poverty.


https://borgenproject.org/tag/pakistan-reading-project/

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 17, 2020 at 8:07am

Human Development Report 2020
The Next Frontier:
Human Development and the Anthropocene
Briefing note for countries on the 2020 Human Development Report

http://hdr.undp.org/sites/all/themes/hdr_theme/country-notes/PAK.pdf


Pakistan’s HDI value for 2019 is 0.557— which put the country in the medium human development
category—positioning it at 154 out of 189 countries and territories.
Between 1990 and 2019, Pakistan’s HDI value increased from 0.402 to 0.557, an increase of 38.6 percent.
Table A reviews Pakistan’s progress in each of the HDI indicators. Between 1990 and 2019, Pakistan’s
life expectancy at birth increased by 7.2 years, mean years of schooling increased by 2.9 years and
expected years of schooling increased by 3.7 years. Pakistan’s GNI per capita increased by about 64.1
percent between 1990 and 2019.

--------

The 2010 Human Development Report introduced the MPI, which identifies multiple overlapping
deprivations suffered by individuals in 3 dimensions: health, education and standard of living. The health
and education dimensions are based on two indicators each, while standard of living is based on six
indicators. All the indicators needed to construct the MPI for a country are taken from the same
household survey. The indicators are weighted to create a deprivation score, and the deprivation scores
are computed for each individual in the survey. A deprivation score of 33.3 percent (one-third of the
weighted indicators) is used to distinguish between the poor and nonpoor. If the deprivation score is
33.3 percent or greater, the household (and everyone in it) is classified as multidimensionally poor.
Individuals with a deprivation score greater than or equal to 20 percent but less than 33.3 percent are
classified as vulnerable to multidimensional poverty. Finally, individuals with a deprivation score greater
than or equal to 50 percent live in severe multidimensional poverty.
Since 2018, HDRO and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative jointly produce and
publish the MPI estimates. The latest release from July 2020 covers 107 developing countries (countries
that lack survey data that allow for the calculation of the MPI are not included): ‘Charting pathways out
of multidimensional poverty: Achieving the SDGs’ (also available in French and Spanish). Definitions of
deprivations in each indicator, as well as methodology of the MPI are given in Technical note 5.
Continuing with the practice from the previous years, HDRO is making public the statistical programs
used in the calculation of the 2020 MPI for a large selection of countries (see
http://hdr.undp.org/en/content/mpi-statistical-programmes).
The most recent survey data that were publicly available for Pakistan’s MPI estimation refer to
2017/2018. In Pakistan, 38.3 percent of the population (81,352 thousand people) are multidimensionally
poor while an additional 12.9 percent are classified as vulnerable to multidimensional poverty (27,419
thousand people). The breadth of deprivation (intensity) in Pakistan, which is the average deprivation
score experienced by people in multidimensional poverty, is 51.7 percent. The MPI, which is the share
of the population that is multidimensionally poor, adjusted by the intensity of the deprivations, is 0.198.
Bangladesh and India have MPIs of 0.104 and 0.123, respectively.

Comment by Riaz Haq on December 27, 2020 at 9:28am

Pakistan’s Ehsaas program

https://tribune.com.pk/story/2277535/ehsaas-stirs-up-a-genuine-paki...


Welcome to the collision of Riyasat-e-Medina with 21st century public policy tools. In the largest cash transfer in Pakistan’s history, 15 million Pakistani households received Rs12,000 each during Covid-19 without a whiff of corruption. That’s around 100 million Pakistanis benefiting if you multiply by size of household (roughly half the country’s population). Beneficiaries were identified through data rather than political patronage (with opposition-run Sindh benefiting the most from a PTI government programme). This revolution will not be televised or tweeted because the beneficiaries of Ehsaas don’t have a voice in the public square. But this is a real revolution — a revolution for the people.

--------------

Welcome to the collision of Riyasat-e-Medina with 21st century public policy tools. In the largest cash transfer in Pakistan’s history, 15 million Pakistani households received Rs12,000 each during Covid-19 without a whiff of corruption. That’s around 100 million Pakistanis benefiting if you multiply by size of household (roughly half the country’s population). Beneficiaries were identified through data rather than political patronage (with opposition-run Sindh benefiting the most from a PTI government programme). This revolution will not be televised or tweeted because the beneficiaries of Ehsaas don’t have a voice in the public square. But this is a real revolution — a revolution for the people.
And this is only one slice of Ehsaas. Here’s some more flavour: two million underprivileged families with a disabled person will receive Rs2000 stipend a month; 80,000 interest-free loans are being given every month, over four years, half of them reserved for women, to help them start new businesses and graduate out of poverty; and 50,762 undergraduate scholarships have been given to deserving students so far, with the number expected to go up to 200,000 students over four years.
Additionally, let’s talk about an education conditional cash transfer programme that provides stipend to underprivileged families to encourage their children to go to school. Children of poorest families are provided conditional cash grants of Rs1,500 for boy child and Rs2,000 for girl child per quarter on fulfilment of 70% attendance in school. Payments are made biometrically to mothers of children.
Ehsaas Amdan is a programme through which assets are given to the deserving (60% women) to enable them to graduate out of poverty. For the purpose of this programme, assets include livestock (goats, cows, buffaloes and poultry), agricultural inputs, body of Chingchi rickshaws, and inputs for small retail outlets and small enterprises. Amdan is being implemented in 25 of the poorest districts across the four provinces of Pakistan. More than a million people will benefit from this four-year programme.

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