January 27, 2003	Monday	Ziqa’ad 23,1423

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ISLAMABAD, Jan 26: The Sindh education system is on the verge of collapse and its performance in implementing schemes sanctioned by the federal government is the poorest, Provincial Education Minister Irfanullah Marwat said on Friday.

“There are gross irregularities in the education department of Sindh which, in comparison to the departments of other provinces, is the most inefficient,” he told reporters here. He has come to attend meetings concerning his department.

He said he had proposed to Education Minister Zubaida Jalal during a meeting that the subject of information technology should be converted to optional from compulsory because 30 per cent of the colleges in Sindh neither had IT teachers nor computer labs. “How the students could take the examination when they have not even seen a computer,” he asked.

There were 35,000 primary schools in the province, of which 14,000 had no roofs, walls or potable water, he said.

He said the 1,660 middle schools were not sufficient to cater to the students coming out of the primary schools every year.

“Since assuming the charge of education ministry two weeks ago, I have visited and discovered a number of ghost schools in the rural areas, which have been locked for seven years but the department is releasing the salaries of their headmasters, teachers and watchmen regularly,” he said.

He said there also were ghost teachers, whose salaries were being misappropriated.

He said there was a bungling of Rs180 million in the Sindh Textbook Board, which purchased paper without a watermark. The printing had been sublet to private presses, without any proper terms and condition, earnest money or contract, he said and added that the press of the board had been closed down. There was another bungling of Rs220 million in the board as it printed textbooks but did not distribute them.

He said he had decided that no new primary school would be opened in the province and the sanctioned ones would be completed in time.

He said many private institutions had been asked to own a public school.

Preference would be given in the appointment of teachers to candidates living in the area, he said.

The minister said he had received complaints of exorbitant fees in private schools though many of those were not providing quality education.

He said his ministry was working on legislation to declare the education department an arbitrary body to have a final say if the parents and a private school management committee failed to arrive at a consensus on the fee structure.

He said the Sindh government was one year behind other provinces in implementing the curriculum approved last year.

“Time has come to take tough decisions to save the future generations,” he observed and added that he would not allow absenteeism among the teachers.

He said the federal government had approved a number of schemes under the education sector reforms and released the funds, but now it had stopped the funding on the grounds that the district governments would carry out the projects out of their share of 2.5 per cent of the general sales tax.

The district governments said they were unable to divert funds for education and health since they had got the amount in lieu of octroi and export tax, he said.

The matter had been discussed with Ms Jalal, who had promised to take up the issue with the district governments, he said.

Replying to a question, he said the issue of Sindh Democratic Alliance leader Imtiaz Sheikh’s post would be resolved.

He said the commitments made with the National Alliance by the Sindh government should be fulfilled and it should not be taken for granted.