School in Mastung Area in Baluchistan

Adult Literacy Center at Mastung



I watched a documentry today on BBC about a Girls School and College in Mastung, Baluchistan. It highlighted how having have a road now...has made a difference all round. When I googled about Mastung, I could not find much about this place on the internet. Mastung district is located in the north western part of Baluchistan and prior to 1991, it was a part of Kalat District - situated between Quetta and Kalat at an elevation of 6,000 feet (1,800 meters). It has a population of 180,349 people as of 2005.. The valley of Mastung is famous for its irrigated crops of potatoes, onions, tobacco, spices, melons, vegetables, almonds, apricots, peaches, plums, grapes and apples.

According to the BBC report, roads and education system has improved a lot over the past few years, now there is a girls high school there. The principal said that their main problem is 'non availability' of transport for girls. They only have one school bus that makes 3 trips to pick students from all the different areas & in winters the girls get back home by sunset. Parents can not afford to hire private transport and hence, girls just can not attend school. However, the students who are lucky to join this school are excited about it and were keenly learning the basics of how to use a computer besides other subjects - when asked if any of them have a computer at home, the answer was in negative. It was indeed great to hear that at least they get a chance to work with and know about computers at school.

Apart from the above mentioned situation another problem that Mastung is facing according to Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) is the convertion of land into dunes. Since irrigation water is not adequate for the entire cultivable land, some of it must remain idle for as long as 4 or 5 years, during which time livestock is allowed to graze on the spontaneous weed-growth, and woody shrubs are up-rooted to provide fuel which in turn exposes the topsoil and the rest of the damage is done because of wind erosion during the dry summer season. Over 10 square miles (26 square kilometers) of the valley's productive land has, in this manner, already been turned into unproductive mobile dunes, whose presence threatens roads and neighboring fields, and reduces yields by the abrasive action of the drifting sands. FAO with local organizations has come up with some indeginious projects to minimize the damage. BBC's report credits the current Cheif Mininter of Baluchistan for the improvements that Mastung is seeing lately.




I really wish and hope that we have a Cheif Mininter, Prime Minister or President from every town in Pakistan for a while - because this is the only way to develop these cities (constituencies), having have proper schools and basic amneties of life otherwise...education, healthcare, sanitation will remain a distant cry for most of the Pakistanies!