ISLAMABAD - As Pakistan has secured over $9 billion aid commitments at the Donors Conference this month for flood recovery operations, the civil society has urged the government for swift action to rehabilitate those affected by the devastating floods.
In a statement issued here by the Pakistan Coalition for Education (PCE) on Friday, special emphasis was laid on prioritizing education in the distribution of disaster aid to support the swift recovery of the education system in the affected areas.
The PCE is an initiative of the Society For Access to Quality Education, Centre for Peace and Development Initiative (CPDI), Pakistan Youth Change Advocates (PYCA), United Global Organization of Development (UGOOD), and renowned educationist, Dr. A.H. Nayyar.
It called for action by state and non-state actors to take immediate measures to bring the displaced children back to school.
This should entail diverting sufficient disaster aid towards education as well as providing conditional cash transfers to the affected households to facilitate the education of their children.
It also stressed the need to make Pakistan’s education system resilient to future emergencies by speedy and quality reconstruction of damaged school infrastructure complete with basic facilities.
“For any of this to materialize, it is important that the government does not compromise on investment in education and at least 4 to 6 percent of the GDP is diverted towards the education system,” said Zehra Arshad.
“The 3.5 million students displaced as a result of last year’s floods in Pakistan belong to marginalized group of society whose education was most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic,” shared Zehra Arshad, the National Coordinator for PCE.
She stressed for allocating a significant portion of these donated funds for providing resilient education in flood-affected areas to ensure that children could continue their education.
“As per data emerging from Pakistan, a dramatic fall in school enrolment was observed among 14-16-year-olds in the poorest households. The loss of learning was also 50% worse for children belonging to underserved socio-economic backgrounds,” shared Areebah Shahid, Executive Director of PYCA.
Special attention is needed to support the continuation of quality learning for marginalized groups including girls, children with disabilities, and transgender students.