PESHAWAR: In Pakistan’s north-western province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP), six-year old Khadija babysits the children of Peshawar’s privileged families for a few hundred rupees a month. She is one of 1.8 million of the province’s seven million children who are currently out of school, according to Ziaullah Bangash, an education adviser to the provincial government.
“My mother works in nearby homes,” Khadija says. “I go with her and take care of people’s babies.”
A July 2018 report by the federal education ministry reported that out of a total 51.5 million children in Pakistan between the ages of five and 16, 22.5 million were out of school.
According to Pakistan’s constitution, children less than 16 years of age cannot be employed in any industry. But due to poverty, natural calamities, a weak industrial base, and still reeling from the effects of war and militancy, KP has some of the highest number of out-of-school and child labor cases in the country.
A few months ago, Shanaz Khan, a UNICEF employee and social worker making the rounds in Pawaki, an impoverished area of Peshawar where Khadija lives with her family, entered their home and proposed that Khadija be enrolled in a small, free school to get basic maths, reading and writing practice. The school, yet unnamed, is Khan’s own, personally funded initiative and aims to deliver basic literacy to children out of school or employed in child labor.
Khan, who comes from a family of government workers and business people, launched her first “school” in October last year by renting a room in a local house for a few hours every day and requesting families to register their children by going door-to-door.
“In the blink of an eye, I had 25 registered children,” she says.
Only four months on, there are four such “schools” in the Pawaki, Speena Warai, Miskeenabad and Gulabad areas of Peshawar where 150 children, both boys and girls, come and get basic education. The space is sparse and simple, with rooms in houses rented for a few hours of afternoon classes where children of varying ages are taught by a single female teacher.
Many of Khan’s students work in brick kilns, as domestic workers, in garment factories, the restaurant business and at wagon workshops.
“We are not only providing education to these street children,” Khan says, “We are also working to make society aware, so that no child is left out of school. It was a big task to convince parents to prefer education over jobs for their children.”
The need for such initiatives has risen in part due to the government’s inability to implement laws already in place, according to renowned documentary film-maker and human rights activist Samar Minallah.
“The government needs to act on the Elimination of Child Labour Act of 2015 and the Right to Education Act of 2017,” she says and adds that the constitution gives all Pakistani children the right to a free education.
But even as government adviser Ziaullah Bangash concedes that millions of children are currently out of school in KP province, he says the PTI government in its last tenure has already “improved the conditions of 50 percent of government schools” and has a plan for the next five years.
“We have a strategy to establish schools in rented buildings and are going to make public-private partnerships to bring these out-of-school children into the classroom,” he says.
“We also introduced independent monitoring unit systems to ensure the attendance of teachers,” he adds.
A damning 2014 report funded by the UK Department for International Development found that Peshawar had some of the highest rates of absentee teachers in the country, citing almost 5,000 teachers were missing from government schools on a daily basis and another 15,000 teachers were absent due to sanctioned leave every day.
In 2017, the provincial government reported that its monitoring systems had led to a 3% increase in the rate of daily teacher turnout, and last year, the KP Chief Minister kicked off an enrollment campaign to get 2.5 million out-of-school children into schools.
Meanwhile, in Peshawar, Khan says one day she hopes to rent a building where her students can have a proper school. Until then, her informal teaching rooms are doing their quiet work, appealing for donations and according to Khan, “extinguishing a thirst and fulfilling the dream of a basic education.”
The teaching rooms of Peshawar
The teaching rooms of Peshawar
- KP has the highest number of out-of-school and child labor cases in Pakistan
- A staggering 22.5 million Pakistani children out of 55.1 million are out of school
Pakistan explores underground gas storage to manage supply swings, price shocks
- Pakistan seeks consultants to assess feasibility of underground gas storage
- Industry officials say storage could ease shortages, cut cargo cancelations
KARACHI: Pakistan is exploring the construction of underground gas storage facilities, a long-discussed energy infrastructure project that officials and industry experts say could help manage supply shortages and cushion the country against global price volatility during periods of geopolitical disruption.
The initiative has resurfaced after a state-run gas infrastructure company this month issued a tender seeking consultants to assess the market need and technical feasibility of underground gas storage, potentially marking the first concrete step toward a project that could cost more than $1 billion.
Pakistan’s energy ministry, through Inter State Gas Systems (Private) Limited (ISGS), posted the tender on the Public Procurement Regulatory Authority (PPRA) portal, inviting local and international firms to conduct a pre-feasibility study for the project.
Asif Inam, chairman of Sui Southern Gas Company (SSGC), welcomed the move, confirming that the idea had been envisioned decades earlier but never implemented.
“If they make it, it will be very helpful because we are forced to close the field in summer and sell LNG cargoes on the spot,” Inam, whose state-owned utility is responsible for gas transmission in Sindh and Balochistan, told Arab News.
He said the ability to store up to one billion cubic feet of gas would ease operational pressures during periods of excess supply and reduce the need to offload imported cargoes.
According to official data, Pakistan imports about $5 billion worth of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and petroleum gas annually, accounting for roughly 30 percent of the country’s total energy imports.
The energy ministry’s spokesperson, Zafar Abbas, did not answer queries about why Pakistan wanted to carry out the project. However, building such storage facilities can help the country avoid costly cargo cancelations.
In November last year, the country scrapped 21 LNG shipments under a long-term contract with Italy’s Eni after excess imports flooded its gas network, while also negotiating the deferment or resale of cargoes with Qatar.
“These storages can also be helpful in war-like situations,” the SSGC official said. “At least we should have storage for a month.”
The tender issued this month by ISGS seeks consultants to assess market demand, identify potential underground storage sites and evaluate their technical and commercial viability.
Inam said if these facilities were built at Port Qasim, then the LNG could be stored right after its arrival.
Energy analyst Muhammad Saad Ali said Pakistan had previously missed opportunities to build strategic reserves during the COVID-19 pandemic when global prices were low due to the absence of storage infrastructure.
“At that time, we did not have storage facilities and lost that opportunity,” said Ali, head of research at Karachi-based Lucky Investments Ltd.
Asked about the expected project cost, he said it could go up to $1 billion.
Ali noted that Pakistan currently has surplus gas, though he said it was a wise move since such storage facilities would provide insurance against future shocks.
“Right now, we have a surplus, so we don’t really need it that much,” he said. “But obviously, in the future, if there is a geopolitical crisis, wars, there can be an energy price shock in all these things.”
