حمید صدیقی
افسوس ہے کہ گذشتہ مہینے زائر حرم حمید صدیقی نے وفات پائی، وہ اس دور کے بہترین نعت گو تھے ان کی نعتیں محض شاعرانہ صناعی نہیں بلکہ سچے جذبات اور دلی کیفیات کی ترجمان ہیں، وہ جیسی پاکیزہ نعتیں کہتے ویسے ہی ترنم سے پڑھتے بھی تھے، ان کی نعتیں صاحب نعتؐ کی بارگاہ میں اتنی مقبول تھیں کہ ان کو دس بارہ مرتبہ آستان نبوی کی حاضری سعادت حاصل ہوئی طبعاً بھی بڑے مہذب اور شریف تھے، ادھر عرصہ سے ان کی صحت خراب رہتی ایک دن معلوم ہوا کہ ریاض نبوی کا زمزمہ سنج باغ رضوان میں پہنچ گیا، اﷲ تعالیٰ مدحِ نبویؐ کے طفیل میں ان کی مغفرت فرمائے۔
(شاہ معین الدین ندوی، مارچ ۱۹۶۵ء)
Men and women are the backbone of human civilization and both play their due roles in the society. In the present era, women are found engaged in every walk of life. Their potential was appreciated in the fields of education, research and medical since long but now they have also got prominence in the fields like army, politics, games, culture, economy, engineering and even avionics. Woman of the modern era is now a good mixture of a conscious wife, affectionate and educated mother and an active worker by increasing her importance and status through achievements in all walks of life. The main purpose of the paper was to identify the rights of women at workplace and to highlight the protection given by Islam for the rights of working women. The study was descriptive in nature. Relevant Hadiths and the examples from the lives of Sahaba regarding the justification of women to work and how their rights to be protected, was discussed. The need of the hour is to create a protected environment for women to work with dignity, without the fear of harassment and abuse which will in turn bring higher productivity and better quality of life at work.
Government of Pakistan has launched various illiteracy reduction plans from time to time to promote literacy rate in the country but these plans could not achieve the targets. This study was designed to appraise these illiteracy reduction plans and to design a low cost model to improve literacy rate in Pakistan. The main objectives of the study were: to appraise the illiteracy reduction plans introduced in Pakistan, from time to time, to identify the needs and problems of the direct affectees (all the illiterates above the age of 10 years), to know the ground realities regarding implementation of illiteracy reduction plans/projects at Government and NGOs level and to design a low cost model to improve the literacy rate in Pakistan. The population of the study was comprised of Educationists i.e. Ph.D. degree holders in Education, Executives working in the top level management in policy formation, plan designing, project development and program development, Executives working in National Planning Commission, Provincial Secretary, Additional Secretary, Deputy Secretary and EDOs (Education and literacy), Literacy teachers, Heads of different NGOs, Community representatives and Direct beneficiaries (the brick makers, manual workers, laborers, peasants etc). Snowball sampling technique was used to find the most relevant persons (respondents) for different illiteracy reduction programmes in different areas for the conduct of this research study. viA mixed-method research design was used i.e. data was quantitative and qualitative. For quantitative data a questionnaire was developed at five point rating scale ranging from ‘1’ indicating strongly disagree to ‘5’ indicating strongly agree; a selection of ‘3’ indicating uncertain/don’t know. For qualitative data some open ended questions were included in the questionnaire. An interview schedule was also developed for Head of NGOs, community representatives and direct beneficiaries. Data collection was started from the person who had been involved for long with the illiteracy eradication programmes. On his identification the other respondent was selected. Overall 1200 questionnaires were sent to the respondents but 998 questionnaires were got back. In this way, data was collected from 1348 (998 questionnaires and 350 interviews) respondents. Main findings of the study showed that need assessment was not carried out before launching illiteracy reduction programs, objectives of the illiteracy reduction programmes were not relevant to the literacy needs of the participants, local community was not involved in the running the literacy centers, religious leaders, intellectuals and retired personnel were not invited to support the illiteracy eradication programmes, and political instability in the country was a hurdle in the achievement of the targets of the illiteracy eradication programmes. In the light of the findings of the study, a low cost model was designed to improve the literacy rate in Pakistan. The proposed model was presented to 10 experts in the discipline of education for its validation. The model was improved in the light of experts’ opinion. They were satisfied that this low cost model will be useful for increasing the literacy rate in Pakistan.