1. Brief introduction
China Fund for Peace and Development (CFPD) helped to build a school in Gwadar on the donated land by a 65-year old local man named Shair Mohammad, who had contributed his 752 square meters land to promote education in the area. The school is known as China-Pakistan Faqeer primary school. The grant is about USD 0.4 million.
Shair Mohammad’s 10-members family is not wealthy. His relatives persuade him to give up the plan given the soaring land prices, but he insisted in doing it, saying that education is the top priority of Pakistan, and the Chinese company are trustworthy and reliable.
It took only 10 months to build Faqeer primary school. The school was built by a subsidiary of China Communications Construction Company Ltd. (CCCC), CCCC-FHDI Engineering Co., Ltd. During the construction process, the local people visited the site every day, looking forward to the completion of the new school. The local people praised the Chinese for their kindness and offered a lot of help.
On 26 August, 2016, Faqeer primary school opened up by including 121 students. Hearing the completion of the primary school, the villagers enthusiastically enrolled and the actual number of applicants were more than 450. On 1 September, 2016, Nawaz Sharif, Prime Minister of Pakistan visited Gwadar, and inaugurated the school with Chinese Ambassador Sun Weidong. This is the second early harvest project completed under CPEC.
2. Latest progress
On 13 September, 2016, Chinese ambassador to Pakistan Sun Weidong visit Faqeer school. Sun Weidong pointed out that Faqeer school has solved the schooling problem of more than 400 children, which fully demonstrated the traditional friendship between China and Pakistan. Sun Weidong asked the students to study hard for Pakistan's economic development, to further develop the friendship between the two countries. He hoped that Faqeer primary school could train qualified scientists, engineers and doctors, that each student could become goodwill ambassador for China-Pakistan friendship.
3. Corporate responsibility
COPHC donated books to help Faqeer school in setting up its library and 380 school uniforms to all students according to local standard.
According to the request of the CFPD and the government of Gwadar, the school management committee was established by China Overseas Port Holding Company (COPHC), Gwadar Port Authority (GPA), Gwadar Development Authority (GDA) and Deputy Commissioner of Gwadar. Chairman of COPHC, Zhang Baozhong took the post of the Chairman of committee. COPHC is working very hard to make Faqeer school into a model school.
(Xu Yao, Infrastructure Dept. Manager, Gwadar Free Zone Company Ltd.)