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KARACHI: Amid rising COVID-19 infections, Sindh Education and Labour Minister Saeed Ghani today (Thursday) has hinted at the possibility of closing schools across the province once again.
The provincial minister made the comments at a ceremony in which he distributed tablets among students at a school in Karachi. He stressed that the schools were reopened to mitigate education loss during the pandemic.
“The education suffered a lot due to COVID-19 pandemic and it is still uncertain that until when schools will remain open,” Saeed Ghani added. The PPP minister underscored that the tablets would provide relief to the students in case education is moved online again.
“Many areas lack internet and other facilities but it is not an issue in 60 percent of the province,” he said, adding that students will study online at home with the help of tablets if schools were closed.
“There are about 40,000 schools across Sindh. We should not leave them at the mercy of NGOs,” he continued. “We should go ahead and build schools ourselves,” he concluded.
Ghani’s statement comes a day after the United Nations and World Bank pleaded for schools to remain open despite a surge in global case tally. In a new report, the organisations highlighted the damage the pandemic has inflicted on children´s education, especially in poor nations.
It is worth mentioning here that Pakistan has reported 16 deaths in last 24 hours by novel coronavirus as the number of positive cases surged to 331,108 today (Thursday).
