EVERY announcement of a vaccination campaign reflects Pakistan’s recognition of the polio problem and a resolve to defeat the crippling virus. Health Minister Mustafa Kamal has launched the final nationwide polio drive of 2025 with the goal to immunise over 45m children. The minister said that the number of polio incidents in the country was lower than last year’s shameful count of 74. Yet he conceded that the scourge exists in “more than half
Child Rights in Focus
PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has approved Rs21.8 billion for strengthening school-level service delivery, improving learning environments, and addressing longstanding gaps in infrastructure and human resources at public sector schools. These approvals form part of the government’s broader education reform agenda being implemented under the good governance roadmap, according to official documents available with Dawn. “The major chunk of the approved funds worth Rs6.185 billion would be utilised through parent-teacher councils (PTCs) to support
Pakistan’s education system has long suffered from a chronic absence of structured career counselling, forcing students to make life-altering academic choices at the tender age of 14 or 15, often based on parental pressure, peer influence or sheer guesswork. Against this backdrop, the Inter Board Coordination Commission’s decision to allow matriculation Arts students to transition into Pre-Medical and Pre-Engineering streams is, on the face of it, a progressive correction to an inflexible system that
KARACHI: Child street performers, some as young as eight, spend hours at city intersections and traffic signals with their faces and clothes painted gold. To catch the attention of passersby and earn money for their families or handlers, these children stand robotically still, appearing to any empathetic observer as little more than statues of sorrow. Reportedly, most of these children are associated with professional begging networks that have been using children on Karachi’s streets
Islamabad : Effective from the Secondary School Certificate (SSC) 1st Annual Examination 2026, the Inter Boards Coordination Commission (IBCC) Forum, in its 183rd meeting, allowed students passing their Matriculation (SSC) in the Arts Group, eligible to register in F.Sc – Pre-Medical and Pre-Engineering groups. This initiative has been taken to facilitate those Martic arts group students who were seeking admission in the Higher Secondary School Certificate (HSSC) – Pre-Medical and Pre-Engineering groups. According to
TOBA TEK SINGH: The police have initiated a crackdown against professional beggars and drug addicts across the Faisalabad region aimed at reducing traffic disruption, crime and improving the safety of citizens. A press release issued by the office of RPO Sohail Akhtar Sukhera on Saturday said that more than 2,800 beggars and drug addicts had been detained from around bus stands, railway stations, important squares, markets and educational institutions. It said that the detainees
PESHAWAR: A constitutional petition has been filed in the Peshawar High Court (PHC) challenging the operation of an oil depot in Taro Jabba, Nowshera, citing serious risks to the lives of schoolchildren. The petition names the federal and provincial governments, the Chairman of the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA), and other relevant authorities as respondents. It has been filed by Tehsil Chairman Gohar Ali and Village Council Chairman Taimur Iqbal. According to the
LAHORE: Punjab Emergency Operations Centre (EOC) CoordinatorAdeel Tasawur shared encouraging progress in the fight against polio, announcing that only four environmental samples tested positive in November—two from Lahore and two from Rawalpindi. He delivered the update while chairing a meeting with representatives from all districts of Punjab ahead of the upcoming National Immunisation Days (NIDs) starting Monday, (December 15). Calling the development ‘a crucial milestone,’ the EOC Coordinator applauded the collective effort of district
• UK variant of mutated influenza bug has also been detected in Pakistan • Doctors say flu shots best way to prevent severe illness, hospitalisation • Fog may speed up transmission; the elderly at risk from younger ‘super spreaders’ WHILE several European countries, particularly the United Kingdom, are grappling with a surge in what is being dubbed the ‘super flu’, Pakistani health experts say the situation “warrants caution, but there is no need to
Rawalpindi:The District Education Authority (DEA), Rawalpindi has issued 14-point security measures and school safety SOPs for private educational institutions across the district, which will come into effect immediately. Action will be taken against institutions that do not implement the SOPs. In this regard, the administration of private educational institutions has been strictly instructed to complete the arrangements for security measures within 2 days. For this purpose, all private educational institutions have been required to
Islamabad:Prime Minister’s National Coordinator for Tourism, Sardar Yasir Ilyas Khan, issued a powerful call to action on December 11, urging Pakistan’s leading business and industrial groups to allocate one per cent of their annual profits toward educating the country’s 26 million out-of-school children. Addressing a gathering of Islamabad’s top corporate leadership, Khan emphasised that business-led philanthropy must become a cornerstone of Pakistan’s national development strategy. He called education “the single most transformative investment for
MIR ALI: Two children were killed and eight others sustained injuries when an explosion ripped through a madrassa in the Isori village of North Waziristan’s Mir Ali area, security sources said on December 11. According to sources, the incident occurred when children “inadvertently triggered explosive material left behind by Khawarij militants”, who had planted improvised devices to obstruct the movement of security forces. The security sources said that 114 square kilometres in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa