Panjab Govt - Body for Education Dept

Lahore : The Punjab government has decided to set up a forum to improve coordination among different donor agencies and the education department with an aim to avoid overlapping of initiatives and waste of resources.

The forum, having representation of donor agencies and the department, will ensure that duplication and excess of inputs may not take place in one particular area at the cost of others. The initiative is also aimed at sensitising the donor agencies to the priority areas and requirements of the education department to ensure proper utilisation of funds.

Elaborating the idea behind the fresh move, a senior official of the department said that at present different donor agencies were involved in teachers' training programme which was an example of overlapping of initiatives. He said under the institutionalisation priorities would be set for achieving the best results so that each sector could receive required attention.

A meeting, chaired by Schools Secretary Nadeem Ashraf, was held in this regard on Friday and representatives of various donor agencies participated in the meeting. The participants were unanimous on sharing the resources and responsibilities and the need of more coordinated efforts.

According to the sources, during the current year, various donor agencies, including the World Bank (WB), have committed a funding of $550 million for the uplift of education in the province.

A participant of the meeting said so far the government-partners interaction had been undertaken in a non-institutionalised way. There had never been a concerted effort either by the cooperating partners or the government to address the challenges of education through a well-coordinated and formally crafted plan, he said, adding that the meeting agreed to initiate a process leading to sharing of resources and responsibilities and an institutional set-up so that no sector remained neglected or deprived at the cost of other.

He said setting up of a forum was also suggested in the meeting under which the department would form working groups and partners would agree and specify what kind of support they would provide.