Pakistan will achieve 86 per cent literacy rate by 2012, National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) Chairman Dr. Naseem Ashraf said. He told the reporters that a two-pronged strategy was adopted to achieve the literacy target. Ashraf said the current literary rate is 54 percent. The NCHD chief said that in the past, social sector was not given enough importance and the past regimes adopted inconsistent policies in this regard. In NCHD programmes, people are empowered through primary education, universal literacy and primary health care, which will eventually help in alleviating poverty, he added. At present, Ashraf said, Pakistan's literacy programme is running in 70 districts of the country in which nearly 500,000 people have been made literate. Eighty-five percent of the new literates were women. Nearly 40 percent of children in Pakistan never go to school, he said adding, "for such children we are running a programme Universal Primary Education." Ashraf said about 40,000 volunteers are mobilized so far in the communities who run door-to-door campaigns. They are working along with teachers in 20 core districts. As many as 33 districts will be added to the programme by next month. The whole country will be covered under NCHD programmes by 2007. Ashraf said nearly two million children who were out of schools were enrolled in the literacy programme and they have started their primary education. He said drop out rate has been reduced from 50 percent to less than 20 percent. "Pakistan's ranking on the worldwide human development index was 145 before the establishment of NCHD. Now we have improved eight points and are at 137."
