Drug use by students in Pakistan's Sindh, a cause of concern

Sindh [Pakistan], May 11 : Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) member and a renowned orthopaedic surgeon Dr Syed Imran Ali Shah has expressed concern over drug use by students in Sindh, especially in schools, Pakistan vernacular media Urdu Point reported.

Use of narcotic substances has been found as a killer poison for students.

The Sindh Assembly Standing Committee on Home Department recently decided to establish a task force to tackle drug use in educational institutions across the province, Pakistan based The Express Tribune newspaper reported.

The decision was made during a meeting chaired by Committee Chairperson Faryal Talpur and attended by officials from the education and home departments.

Education Minister Sardar Ali Shah; Advisor to Chief Minister on Law, Barrister Murtaza Wahab; Excise and Narcotics Control Minister Mukesh Kumar Chawla; Member Standing Committee on Home and Standing Committee on School Education Syed Zia Abbas; Sindh IGP and other officials participated in the meeting, according to The Express Tribune.

The meeting also decided to increase efforts to monitor habitual criminals by electronically tagging them with tracking bracelets.

Concern was expressed by participants about the growing prevalence of drug use in schools and colleges and the seeming indifference of parents and schools.

Out of the estimated nine million drug addicts in the country, approximately two million are believed to be between the ages of 15 and 25, officials told the meeting, as per The Express Tribune.

Meanwhile, Dawn recently reported that around 20,000 public schools have been destroyed or considerably damaged in Sindh due to floods, depriving hundreds of thousands of poor children of education, and that too, at the most formative stage of their lives.

Although the provincial government has since declared an 'educational emergency', barring some official meetings and pressers, nothing much has come forth in the form of concrete efforts on the part of the provincial or federal government to rehabilitate these ill-fated schools.