Karachi, MTT News Desk: "Unsafe schools are serious issue, which had never been taken into consideration.  That was the reason that in 2010 Floods and 2005 Earthquake the school buildings were badly affected seriously disrupting education of millions of children.

The only way to address the issue is to ensure safety of the schools and children", these remarks were expressed by United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Culture Organization (UNESCO) in a workshop to finalize the School Safety Plan of Action for Sindh, which was organized in Karachi in collaboration with Provincial Disaster Management Authority (PDMA) today.

This stakeholder workshop was convened by PDMA Sindh to review the draft for endorsement by the Government of Sindh for the finalization of a comprehensive Plan of Action for School Safety in Sindh.

This initiative is continuation of the work on the draft plan, developed in 2010, through a wide stakeholder consultation, involving key public sector and civil society organizations, and with technical assistance of UNESCO. Under One UN Disaster Risk Management Joint Program, UNESCO is providing technical support to the Provincial Governments to draft Provincial Plans as the road map for School Safety in Pakistan.

The participants highlighted the need to disseminate information on Safe Schools and Hospitals Campaign widely to make people aware and make pledges.  Currently only one school and a single hospital have been pledged by Pakistan.

The participants also discussed and agreed the tasks and the structure of Provincial Inter-Departmental Working Group for effective implementation of Disaster Risk Reduction in education sector in Sindh.  PDMA will present the final draft to senior government for approval.

At the end of the workshop, the participants endorsed the School Safety Plan of Action with some modifications for review and approval by the Government of Sindh.  The Plan provides a comprehensive road map of actions that will be undertaken for school safety in a holistic and a systemic manner over a period of 4 years.

Senior officials attended the Workshop from PDMA, Department of Education and Literacy, Department of Social Welfare, Department of Health, Civil Defense, Police, Citizen Foundation, Pakistan Fisher Folks, etc.  The workshop was also attended by the officials from other UN agencies including UNDP, UNHABITAT, WFP and WHO.

Pakistan has committed to complete national assessment of the safety of all existing education and health facilities by 2011, and that by 2015 develops and implements concrete action plans for safer schools and hospitals.  Similarly, it has committed to include disaster risk reduction in all school curricula by the same year. These targets were voluntarily agreed at 2008-2009 World Disaster Reduction Campaign on Hospital Safe from Disasters.