KARACHI, June 2: The students of class VI, VII and VIII of government schools could not get the scholarship amount before the two-month summer vacations , as the city government's education department failed to evolve any mechanism of payment to the school girls, said a source in the department.

It was learnt that in line with Sindh government's decision, about 93,500 school girls in the city were to get Rs1,000 each as a 10-month scholarship with effect from August 2003, as an incentive for continuing secondary school education.

The source said that Rs88 million pertaining to the 2003-2004 session, which terminated on March 31, was released to the city government in December 2003. Referring to the tiresome official process, an insider said that girl students of secondary schools had not been able to receive their amount pertaining to the session 2002-2003 in time.

After much hue and cry, they were delivered the cheques pertaining to scholarship amount only in July and August 2003 through head masters, added the source, saying that utilization report of the cheques in question were still awaited from the educational officers.

Students remained without payment during their school days, sources said adding that the officials are now worried as to how the entire lot of deserving students would be gathered during the vacations. Most of the students could not be located even by their school heads, he said.

It is learnt that the city government's education department, which had started preparing cheques for students in April, has not finalized the work so far. The list of deserving students has also been acquired from the respective educational officials, who as per previous practices are to get cheques for onward distribution among students.

A source privy to the scholarship disbursement process said that city government wanted to involve UC Nazims in the process in order to ensure transparency. However, it is still not clear how the cheques would be passed on to the students.

A senior school teacher said that it would be difficult to call the students for handing over of the cheques on any particular day during the vacations and as such the matter would be delayed till the reopening of schools in August.