The Sindh government has recruited as many as 319 music teachers in schools and intended to hire 400 more if they got a chance to serve in the next tenure.

“Today, the Sindh government of Pakistan Peoples Party has linked the relationship of its future generations with this eternal beauty and love,” Sindh Education Minister Sardar Hussain Shah said in a social media post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

He made the post after the Sindh Education Department distributed offer letters among music and art teachers in a ceremony in Karachi on Thursday.

It is the flagship project of the PPP-led Sindh government.

“We believe in our cultural and spiritual roots, which are based on the great tradition of Sufis,” he said and stressed the need for making arts and music a medium to pitch Pakistan as an “enlightened, progressive, tolerant and humanitarian” country.

He added that it would help in ending all kinds of bigotry. Shah was of the view that the initiative would improve the skills of children.

Farhatullah Babar, a senior leader of the Pakistan People’s Party expressed pleasure in the new induction of new music and art in the syllabus and said “Sindh has become the first province to formally induct music & fine arts teachers in secondary schools. A great idea to neutralise an extremist, militant and indoctrinated mindset. Well done & stay the course.”

Singer-cum-philanthropist Shehzad Roy also appreciated the initiative of the provincial government. “In a society, we should teach each other to coexist and celebrate diversity instead of just tolerating one another,” he wrote in a social media post.

He added the government was providing musicians with a platform to shape the future and promote harmony in the next generation.

Certificates from the National Music Academy were termed mandatory for recruitment. Initially, the government had decided to hire 750 music teachers in BSP-14.