LARKANA: The Education Department, Larkana, joined hands with the National Commission for Human Development (NCHD) on Monday to lead an awareness rally through the city, calling on parents to enrol every child in school as Pakistan observed World Literacy Day.
The rally set out from Government PV Sindhi School and was led by District Education Officer (Primary) Larkana, Anis-ur-Rehman Jalbani. The NCHD, which works under the Federal Ministry of Education, co-organised the march.
Walking alongside the DEO were NCHD Assistant Director Education, Literacy and Volunteer Community Development Ashfaq Sheikh, Sada Mirani, Mumtaz Abro and Assistant Director Finance Abdul Ghaffar Kathio. Field officers Sheeraz Mehmood Pathan, Shahid Aziz Abbasi, Maqsood Sheikh, Atta Laghari and Shahid Kalhoro were also among the participants, joined by teachers and students who carried placards through the route.
The procession moved through several parts of the city before culminating at Jinnah Bagh Press Club, where speakers addressed the gathering on enrolment and literacy.
Speakers told the gathering that education was not merely a means of securing employment but the foundation of awareness, character building and a dignified society. Education, they said, enabled individuals to make informed decisions and to understand their rights and responsibilities.
They urged parents to provide equal educational opportunities to all their children, particularly girls, so that they could lead their lives with dignity, confidence, independence and self-respect — a message that carries weight in a district where girls’ retention beyond primary level remains a persistent challenge for administrators.
The speakers cautioned against treating World Literacy Day as a one-day observance, describing it instead as a renewed commitment to ensuring that every child had access to school and quality education.
They pressed for effective measures to achieve universal school enrolment, improve the quality of teaching and reduce the dropout rate. Accurate data on out-of-school children, they said, should be collected and then used to bring those children back into the formal education system — a shift from awareness campaigning towards verifiable, child-by-child tracking.
They also reminded parents that primary education is provided free of cost by the government, urging families to take advantage of the facility and secure their children’s educational future.
NCHD officials said the organisation had previously worked with the Education Department to facilitate the enrolment of thousands of children across Sindh. They assured the gathering that the Commission would continue its cooperation with the department to bring more out-of-school children into the education system.
Sindh’s enrolment gap has long been treated as a governance problem as much as a social one, with dropout pressure concentrated in the transition from primary to middle school and heaviest on girls in rural districts. Campaigns of this kind matter mainly to the extent that they are followed by enumeration, admissions and retention — the three steps officials themselves identified at Jinnah Bagh.
Participants closed the event with a pledge that “Every child in school, a book in every hand and education in every home” was essential for building a brighter, stronger and more educated Sindh.
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