President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Raja Pervez Ashraf on Friday said that literacy was an effective weapon to fight extremism and intolerance, and for winning the battle of minds.
The president, in his message on International Literacy Day, said that low literacy and poverty multiplied extremist tendencies, resulting in a grave threat to national integrity and endangering regional peace. He said that Pakistanis would be joining the international community in observing the day and to highlight the significance and correlation of literacy to peace. Zardari said that every year, Literacy Day was a reminder for all the people to increase literacy in order to promote better understanding among the people and to inculcate a sense of tolerance and mutual co-existence. He said that at a time when peace is at stake due to intolerance, it is important to promote literacy globally to promote peace. President Zardari said the theme for the year 2012 `Literacy and Peace’ is of special significance in this region which is one of the most volatile regions of the world. “Being the followers of a religion of peace, we are also the inheritors of moderate, tolerant and progressive traditions,” he said.
He said militants and extremists were nurtured by the international community to fight a rival ideology in the region in 80s and even earlier.
The president said the government had taken significant steps to promote literacy and to educate young generation to not only wean them away from the militants’ trap but also to make them valuable human resource capital. He said all political parties had joined hands to amend the constitution so as to give every child the right to education.
Zardari, however, stressed full participation of the entire nation and all stakeholders to increase literacy in the country.
He expressed the confidence that the National Commission for Human Development, the provincial education departments and all other concerned with education sector had planned suitable activities to highlight the need for increasing literacy and to promote the values of peace, tolerance and mutual co-existence. He urged the education planners to adopt a comprehensive and multi-pronged strategy for the provision of education to youth, both through formal and non-formal methods. He called upon the international community to support the government in creating an enabling environment for every child to receive education and join the national productive effort.
