HYDERABAD, Sept 28: DCO Mohammad Hussain Syed has stressed the need for an integrated strategy under the administrative umbrella of the district government to bring about meaningful reforms in the education sector.

He was speaking at a meeting with four-member delegation of the USAID programme for the Education Sector Reforms Assistance here on Monday evening.

The delegation comprised Prof Nasreen Hussain and Saadat from Islamabad and Shama Shaikh and Aamir Siddiqui from Hyderabad.

The delegation discussed with the DCO mid-term review of Education Reforms Works being undertaken under the ESRA programme in the district.

The DCO said that the donor agencies and other NGOs working for improvement in the education sector or other sectors were directly linked with EDOs concerned through the provincial government without any intimation to the district government as such disparity and duplication of work had became a common phenomenon.

He said such unorganized and isolated work had not only caused wastage of public money but also created wide gap between stakeholder organizations.

He said the education department was supposed to be run under guidelines and supervision of the district government but was more responsible to the provincial government.

He said until and unless the district government was empowered and the district steering committee headed by the district nazim or the DCO was formed objectives of the ESRA or other development programmes in the education sector could not be achieved.

Citing examples of the district Baitul Maal steering committee headed by the district nazim, district steering committee for the National Improvement Programme for Watercourses headed by the DCO and the district steering committee for the Devolved Social Services Programme headed by the DCO, he said these programmes were being successfully implemented with good deliveries to the people.

Likewise, if the district government was assigned its role of compiling and implementing development strategies, it would definitely achieve targeted objectives successfully, he said.

He said besides these bottlenecks, the district government had allocated a considerable amount for improvement in the education sector and informed that recently Rs40 million were utilized to provide furniture and other required equipments to schools in the district.

He said in addition to this, the district government was planning to utilize its saving amount of Rs27 million for providing potable water, boundary walls to girls’ schools, construction of additional class rooms, furniture and equipments to schools and opening early child learning schools in the district.

He said the district government was funding schools on need and assessment basis and advised the ESRA management to follow this mechanism to ensure equitable facilities to each school of rural as well as urban areas.

The members of the US AID evaluation team who came to evaluate and conduct midterm review of its funded programme, informed the DCO that under the USAID-ESRA programmes’ works on policy planning, teachers training, adult literacy and community participation was going on to bring reforms in the education sector.

They said that of 10,000 target, 5,000 teachers had been trained, 10,000 adults had been made literate and an amount of Rs59,000 each to 416 schools of ex-Hyderabad district had been provided lacking facilities.