KARACHI, May 19: Private school owners and managers have expressed dissatisfaction over the pace of processing of cases pertaining to renewal of registration or issuance of fresh registration to the schools.

Schools’ management representatives claim that despite passage of considerable time, the school education department of the City government has failed to process even the cases of simple renewal of registration, adding that development in the cases of issuance of new registration is also very slow.

Every day, number of school owners or their managers visit the offices of the city government’s education department at the Civic Centre, but the officials inform them that their cases are in process.

“I had submitted the renewal case some four months back, but still I am waiting for the promised certificate,” a person coming from a far flung area said.

The school managements, which have already submitted their cases with the private school registration wing of the education department, feared that due to delay in delivery of required registration letters, the Secondary Education Board would ask for surcharge for enrolment of class IX students.

Most of the times, case-files are not made available. “Even after detection of files, which involves extra efforts by stakeholders, we are told that the case is ready but the signing authorities are unable to clear the cases due to their preoccupation,” another school owner said.

However, the lady, in charge of the registration cases, Badar Yousuf, said that all cases of renewal and fresh registration were being taken on priority basis, under the “one window operation policy” and certificates were being issued in the shortest possible time.

She said that she was assigned the job pertaining to private schools by the new EDO (Education) Anwar Ahmad Zai, in early March, but what she inherited from the past was all a mess and she and her staff had to make extra efforts to streamline the things.

The City government’s drive for registration of private educational institutions’ was launched about six-and-a-half months back, under the Sindh Private Educational Institutions (Regulation and Control) Ordinance, 2001-2002. Under the ordinance the schools are required to get fresh registration or renewal of old registration.

It is estimated by officials concerned that about 3,000 private schools are operating in the city. However, by the end of February, the EDO office had received about 1,750 applications pertaining to renewal or fresh registration, out of which, about 1,300 cases were cleared and certificates were issued accordingly, the sources in the department said.

Earlier, April 10 was fixed as the last date for registration or renewal, however, it was extended indefinitely, and in the second run the department had received about 90 applications only, a dealing staff said, adding that as many as 700 cases, including 400 that of new registration, were in pending.

The in charge of the department said that the EDO concerned had now constituted 18 committees at town level, which had already started visiting the schools to verify the required conditions for new registration in all the 18 towns of the city. Hopefully, the inspection of new schools would be completed by May 31 and after that certificate of new registration would be issued to the schools, she claimed.

She further claimed that about 200 renewal certificates were ready for delivery but school owners were not turning up. She admitted that sometimes cases piled up for clearance from high ups, but now the process had been streamlined, and school owners’ grievances would be eliminated soon.