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| October 13, 2005 | Thursday | Ramzan 8, 1426 |
Blame game on school buildings starts
LAHORE, Oct 12: The school buildings damaged during the Saturday’s earthquake in Punjab had either received uplift funds under the provincial education sector reforms programme or were not listed among the institutions with missing facilities by the district governments concerned, it is learnt.
The education department has received a report on the number of dead and injured schoolchildren and damaged buildings in the wake of recent tremors from all the 34 executive district officers (education).
According to the report, three girls died and over two dozens children injured, mostly girls, when the buildings of the old primary portion of the Government Girls Middle School Faki Sharif, Mandi Bahauddin, the Government Girls High School West Range, Rawalpindi and the Government Primary School, Pind Dadan Khan, were damaged badly. Seven students and a peon of the Government Fatima Jinnah Degree College, Gujrat, were also wounded when its terrace got damaged due to the earthquake.
Besides them, the buildings of the Government Elementary School Housing Colony, Sheikhupura, Government Primary Girls School Kalupura, Gujrat, Shimla Islamia Boys High School, Rawalpindi, Government Faizul Islam Boys High School, Rawalpindi, and several schools in Lahore, Sialkot and Narowal were damaged in the tremor.
Officials sources told Dawn on Wednesday that the Punjab government had released Rs2.5 million and Rs900,000 uplift grants to the Government Elementary School Housing Colony Sheikhupura and the Government Girls Middle school Faki Sharif, Mandi Bahauddin, respectively.
They said, the district governments concerned did not provide the names of the remaining damaged schools to the Punjab government while it was carrying out a survey on the primary, secondary and higher-secondary schools lacking facilities like furniture etc, or having dilapidated buildings, a couple of years ago.
An education department official claimed that the assistant education officer (AEO) concerned, who were responsible for carrying out the survey of schools under their jurisdiction, did not bother to inspect every school and mostly relied on the data provided to them by the headmasters of the schools.
He said that a district steering committee, comprising mainly an MPA, DCO and district nazim, was authorized to recommend the PESRP funds.”Sometimes the MPA has to spend the fund on the establishment of new schools where he has a vote bank and ignores the other where he does not have,” he added.
Under the PESRP, he said some 34 monitoring evaluation officers had been recruited to inspect the schools.
When contacted, Punjab Education Minister Imran Masood said that an inquiry would be launched after a thorough survey of the schools whose buildings had been damaged in the tremor. He said the buildings would be renovated and reconstructed soon after the award of a contract to the Communication and Works department.
He said the Punjab government had given Rs100,000 to the families of the deceased girl students and Rs65,000 to the injured.
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