SAARC Countries Urge Regional Cooperation To Push Literacy

New Delhi: India's Saakshar Bharat adult literacy programme, which has been named for a UNESCO award, Saturday came in for praise from South Asian neighbours, especially Afghanistan and Pakistan, with countries calling for the need for regional cooperation in literacy for peace and development.

Speaking at the International Conference on Alliance for Literacy, Peace and Development in South Asia at Vigyan Bhavan here, representatives from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) also called for linking literacy to skill development to ensure the people can get jobs.

Union Human Resource Development Minister M. Pallam Raju said international cooperation can be a very useful route to promote literacy. "We have enough wisdom in our region to cooperate on the basis of commonality of language," he said referring to Urdu, Bangla and Tamil being shared languages among SAARC neighbours. He said India is open to learn from the innovation and strengths of neighbours and is willing to share its own experiences.

Afghanistan Education Minister Ghulam Farooq Wardak said his country despite the violence and suffering has made tangible progress in educating its men and women, which is the way to peace, progress and development. Wardak enumerated the ways in which his country was reopening schools shut by the Taliban, providing skill development to youth to ensure jobs and ensuring girls get education. He said his country a decade ago had eight million children with no access to education and 11 million illiterates. He said there was a need to replace "guns and bullets with pens and boards".