ISLAMABAD " In connection with the International Literacy Day different meetings, symposiums and seminars were organised by the various government and non-government organisations here on Monday to spreads awareness and to present recommendations how to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). According to a survey report revealed here in a that Pakistan is among those countries, which is home to a significant proportion of the world's poor. Almost a quarter of the country's 158 million people survive beneath a poverty line evaluated as the cost of basic food and essential non-food items and which has been adopted as the benchmark for progress towards the MDGs. Adult literacy remains just over 50% and, in rural areas, literacy of women is only 20%. While awareness regarding MDGs both public and private sectors allows the government to escape censure for inaction, for example, its exceptionally low spending on education and health which together amounts to less than 5% of GDP, said the report. Furthermore this indicator stood at 26.1% in 1990 but rose to 34.5% by the end of that decade. The figure of 23.9% reported by the said survey conducted in 2004/05 therefore implies a rate of poverty reduction, which would meet the 2015 target of 13%. However, the survey draws attention to the large number of families living just above the poverty line, warning that their status is "very sensitive" to economic shocks such as food price inflation. Speakers at the events were criticising the government decision to give priority spending on military and other unnecessary projects. Owing to prevailing poverty in the county ,many children to approach adulthood through the inappropriate experience of factory labour or unregulated religious madrasa schools, as about 1.5 million children are believed to attend madrasas, some of which are suspected as terrorists and they don't find appropriate opportunities in their life. Mehboob Elahi, a Literacy expert said, "Prospects for achieving the wider range of MDGs in Pakistan are at best uncertain, none more so than in education where net primary enrolment remains barely over 50%, with girls lagging behind. Progress is far too slow to reach the 2015 Goal of equal and universal enrolment as per the international commitments which government of Pakistan has made earlier in 2001 at Geneva Convention. "To achieve the MDGs government of Pakistan has decided to establish a literacy commission in this regard named National Commission for Human Development (NCHD). However, the said commission had been working significantly over literacy and launched a campaign to ensure the enrolment of the out of school children", he observed. He was of the view that it was the foremost duty of the incumbent government to ensure its earlier commitments with international community to achieve the MDGs till 2015.