KARACHI, March 4: The delay in the issuance of admit cards to candidates of class IX and X has been adding to confusion, and the students and their parents are concerned over non-issuance of admit cards and enrolment cards to the candidates.

Parents of a number of students told Dawn that their sons and daughters have still not been issued these cards by the Board of Secondary Education while the class IX and X examinations for regular students will commence on March 6.

There were complaints that schools have withheld the admit cards and were not issuing these cards to students unless they pay the school tuition fee for the months of June and July.

In such cases where schools have delivered the admit cards, there is no mention of the enrolment numbers as enrolment cards have not been issued at all.

Even in the admit cards issued to some of the students, the relevant place for enrolment number had been left blank, said the parents who maintained that school heads were also not clear on the subject.

However, an official of the BSE said the students of class IX who have not been provided enrolment cards do not need to worry about their cards as they can still appear in the examination by virtue of the admit cards issued to them.

He said that the BSE, normally, did not issue enrolment cards (numbers) to students in Class IX and it was able to deliver the enrolment cards in Class X only, as it consumes a considerable time.

The BSE official said that candidates should not feel disturbed as answer scripts did not carry any column for enrolment number. Students are required to mention their roll numbers and name only in the answer scripts, he added.

The BSE chairman, Aziz Ansari, said that the board was in the process of doing away with the old system of allocating enrolment numbers and admit cards (roll number) to students separately.

In future, the BSE would be allocating only one computerised number to a student throughout his or her two years of education, which would stand valid both for enrolment and examination purposes for the two annual and supplementary examinations as well, the BSE official said.

He said that all such students who were presently admitted to Class IX and were appearing in Class IX annual examinations, commencing from March 6 and 7, would be issued a computerised card in class X.

The computerised cards were being introduced for the first time and the board had to undergo tendering process as well, therefore, there were chances of some inordinate delay in this regard.

He said in order to ensure that admit cards were being delivered to students properly, the BSE would hold a survey from Tuesday.

He said that BSE had not withheld admit cards of any students, except for one private school’s students on account of attendance.

He said the BSE had entertained all such cases where attendance of students was reported to be at 60 per cent or above by the school heads.

He suggested that parents having any problem with schools with regard to admit cards should contact the Executive District Officer, Education, as well.

NEW CONTROLLER: The competent authorities has finally relieved Javed Iftikhar from the post of Controller of Examinations while the SSC examinations are in progress.