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‘10 million Afghans with high percentage of women are illiterate’
AT-KABUL: Ministry of Education’s (MoE) Literacy Department established new literacy mobilization concept to enhance literacy training programs across the country.
A press conference titled “ Mobilize for Literacy Education” was launched by MoE’ s Literacy Department with the support of Afghan National Association for Adult Education (ANAFAE) and DVV international to share and discuss the new literacy mobilization concept for literacy education and its program implementation.
“Literacy department has codified a new draft of literacy mobilization concept to boost up literacy program across the country,” said Deputy Minister for Literacy Department of MoE, Sardar Mohammad Rahimi.
He said that we would struggle to involve and seek support of civil society, private sectors, national and international organizations and donors in order to eliminate illiteracy throughout the country.
While praising ANAFAE for well cooperation with the literacy department in the aspect of literacy training programs, he urged other organization to take active part in the aspect.
He stated that illiteracy is the main reason for adversity among nations and unfortunately, Afghanistan named the most illiterate society worldwide.
He elaborated that 10 million Afghans with high percentage of women are illiterate and each year around 200,000 eligible schoolchildren deprive of schools across the country, which this figure adds to the illiterate people.
Despite low capacity and lack of enough financial resources annually, literacy-training programs cover 450,000 illiterate people, which out of 300,000-350,000 will become literate, he noted.
If this program continues at this level we will fail to reach to the target to make 60 percent of population literate till 2020, he mentioned.
He said that only 1.5 percent of budget allocates to the literacy training programs, which is not enough.
He insisted that only government will fail to fight against literacy, rather it requires all the society such us governmental and non-governmental organizations, private sectors and individuals to take part in this campaign.
Managing Director for ANAFAE, Abdul Bashir Khaliqi, while welcoming the new draft for literacy training programs, said that ANAFAE will continue its support with the literacy training programs in the country.
Afghan Civil Society Forum Representative Mr. Ayoub Shahriar also pledges to work shoulder-to-shoulder with literacy department and back the literacy training programs across the country.
A joint civil society declaration was presented by Mr. Jami, in which they said that Afghan government must put on top agenda education and support literacy training program through increasing financial and technical resources, ministry of education must increase 50 percent in covering of literacy training, ministry must standardize the curriculum in cooperation with national and international organizations, private sector and civil societies must support literacy training programs, media outlets must run awareness programs in the aspect. In the declaration, they also requested the donors must allocate 20 percent of their donation to the education.
