HYDERABAD, Jan 20: Sindh Minister for Education Irfanullah Marwat has said that a huge budget of Rs20 billion had been allocated for education but it was all going down the drain.

Speaking at a meet-the-press programme, organized by the press club on Monday, he said that he would make sincere efforts to improve the quality of education which had all but reached a point of no return.

He said the dismal performance of the education department could be gauged by the fact that in the D. J. Science College, Karachi, only 14 students were admitted from government schools out of a total of 614 students.

He said in other institutions, 89 per cent students were admitted from private institutions and only 11 per cent by the students of government institutions.

The education minister regretted that out of 34,000 primary schools, 14,000 did not have even one building.

He said he had visited one school which was without any students as it was functional on paper only for the last 10 years, and added that the reason for it being without any students was that no village was located anywhere near it.

He wondered where the students of 34,000 primary schools would go after completing their primary education as there were only 1,600 middle schools.

He said that he was not oblivious of the opposition which he would have to face but he expressed his determination to eliminate the ghost schools and ghost employees in the education department.

Mr Irfanullah referred to the Sindh Textbook Board saying that while its own press was lying closed, books were being got published from private printers. He wondered why it was so.

He wondered why the Board, which had been given an annual budget of Rs350 million, was purchasing paper at a cost of Rs180 million from just four parties without inviting open tenders.

He said that in flagrant violation of the law even the paper purchased from outside did not carry the Board’s watermark.

He agreed with a questioner that teachers’ training should be held at the Teachers Training Institutes and not in hotels.

He said that the Asian Development Bank had given a loan of Rs150 million for the Nawabshah Teachers Training Institute but during the last five years it had trained only 2,500 teachers, and added that presently only 69 teachers were receiving training at the institute.

He said that he had received many complaints that the private schools were charging exorbitant fees and paying low salaries to the teachers, but added that according to the existing laws the government could not interfere in these matters.

He, however, said that he had made certain recommendations to bring about radical changes in the relevant laws to have control over private schools regarding their fees.