ISLAMABAD, Sep 12 (APP): Caretaker Federal Minister for Education and Professional Training Madad Ali Sindhi on Tuesday chaired a high-level meeting to take effective measures to curtail the spread of drugs in academic institutions across the nation.
Anti Narcotics Force Deputy Inspector General, the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Executive Director, the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) Deputy Director General, and representatives from the Private Educational Institutions Regulatory Authority (PEIRA) attended the meeting. Senior officials of the ministry including Additional Secretary Junaid Ikhlaq and Senior Joint Secretary Abdul Sattar Khokhar were also present.
Madad said we had launched a comprehensive campaign to spread awareness about the issue and further take practical and decisive actions to curtail drug usage in academic institutions across the country.
He emphasized the role of HEC, PEIRA, and FDE to control the spread of drugs in academic institutions. He ordered all of these bodies to conduct a comprehensive exercise to identify the problematic areas in collaboration with the ANF. He said we needed to understand the spread of the problem first before we devised a strategy to curtail it.
Madad said youngsters in Europe were dying on the roads because of this problem.
He said we had not reached that point yet and we would ensure that we could control this issue before it got out of hands. He said there were almost 250,000 students in the Federal Public Schools that should be put at top priority.
He directed the FDE to table a comprehensive report on the spread and use of drugs in public schools. He said all of these students were the future of Pakistan and we could not let them waste their potential due to drugs.
Madad was briefed by the representatives of FDE, PEIRA, and HEC about their policies regarding drug use control. He was told that all three institutions had detailed policies that were in place to curb the spread of drugs.
He was informed that the issue remained in the implementation of the policies. He directed all the officials to establish a common forum to oversee the efforts to eradicate drug use in educational institutions.
ANF DIG Rommel Akram told the minister that ANF was able to seize 80% of the total drugs in Pakistan, adding the ANF faced a serious issue of resources as it only had 1972 employees.
He said even though ANF had limited resources, it was able to outperform. He emphasized the need for collaboration between the academic institutions and ANF.
He said drug use was a menace that even the United States of America had not been able to control even with 1.5 times the expenditure of the Gross Domestic Product of Pakistan.
He said, on the direction of the minister, ANF would provide total support to the academic institutions and a forum for collaboration between HEC, FDE, PEIRA, ministry, and ANF would be formulated.
