January 11, 2003	Saturday	Ziqa'ad 7, 1423

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MULTAN, Jan 10: The United Teachers Association (UTA) of the Punjab technical education institutions has demanded constitution of a commission to assess the performance of the Technical Education and Vocational Training Authority (Tevta).

Through a statement released here on Friday, the UTA challenged the claims of Tevta and its chairman regarding the performance and achievements of the authority in bringing both qualitative and quantitative improvement to the technical education and training.

It said the Tevta chairman had been wrongly stating on various forums that 92 per cent candidates of the secondary school (Matric) examinations had failed every year. The pass ratio of the SSC candidates in annual and supplementary examinations fluctuated around 60 per cent.

Of the unsuccessful candidates, 10 per cent kept on attempting as private candidates while five per cent relinquished the education and opted for odd jobs. The remaining half of the failed candidates went for vocational training which was being offered in the province for the last 25 years in the form of short courses ranging from six months to two years period.

Around 234 technical institutions of the provincial education department had been handed over to the Tevta where 45,000 interns would get training per annum even before its establishment. If the merger of 168 institutions of other departments with Tevta had been taken into account, the number of interns would rise to 72,000 per annum. “So what the authority has achieved on this front to boast,” the UTA release questioned the reported claim of Tevta chairman about the increase in number of students since the authority came into being.

The release further said that refresher courses for teachers and apprenticeship training for students had been the part of the technical education in the province since 1962.

Challenging the Tevta claim that computer laboratories in technical and commerce institutions was a job done by the authority, the UTA said the computer as a subject was included in the syllabus of 135 institutions of the technical education wing in 1996. When the government failed to provide equipments for the computer labs, the students boycotted their exams. Later, the students of Government College of Technology, Multan, filed a writ petition with the Lahore High Court (2328/98).

The petition was disposed of when the government assured the court that it was purchasing the equipments and that students affected due to the delay would be compensated. Later, the government purchased computers for the commerce and technology education colleges through an Asian Development Bank loan, and also started charging Rs1,200 from students as computer fund at the time of admission in the first year. The computer fund was still being charged from every candidate.

Presenting fees comparison before and after the Tevta, the UTA admission fee for the three-year diploma in associate engineering was Rs1,843 and for diploma in commerce it was Rs1,003 in 1998 before the establishment of Tevta which now were Rs3,725 for Dab and Rs2,590 for D-Com. Besides, the authority had also increased manifold the fees of B.Com, M.Com, B.Tech, and vocational training courses. “Tevta is earning an additional income of Rs70 million per annum through increasing fees only from 234 institutions of the Education department.”

The UTA said the inclusion of industrialists into institute management committees was not a step taken by the Tevta as infact the IMCs had been constituted well before its (Tevta’s) inception in 1997. The matter of including industrialists in the IMCs had been clearly settled in the national education policy. As a matter of fact, the Tevta could not implement the education policy recommendations to improve the standard of technical education.

The UTA said Tevta highups should apprise the public of the steps they had taken, if any, after taking over the technical education affairs in the province in the name of improvement. The only step Tevta took after its inception was the introduction of short courses in the name of market demand which had been badly failed despite drastic reduction in fees from earlier Rs500 to Rs800 per month to now Rs50 per month.