January 25, 2006	Wednesday	Zilhaj 24, 1426

KARACHI, Jan 25: The Sindh Board of Technical Education (SBTE) Karachi has planned to hire the services of a private dispatch firm for delivery of question papers at all examination centres on the very day of examinations.

Official sources on Tuesday said the decision to engage courier services had been taken to ensure safe transfer of papers simultaneously to centres throughout the province leaving no room for any misgivings about leakage of question papers.

In order to facilitate the respective courier firm, the SBTE has also decided to make a change in the time of examination sittings in the morning shift. As such, the morning shift examinations both for matric Technical and DAE programmes will, in the future, start at 10am instead of 9am. The second-shift examinations, however, will be held at 2pm as usual, said a senior official of the Sindh Board of Technical Education.

It is learnt that the high-ups in the board seem to be perturbed following reports about the leakage of papers from time to time, and, therefore, want to get rid of the problem by reducing the number of hands involved in the handling of papers – from the board’s secrecy department to the examination centres.

Under the proposed setup in future, only the secrecy department and the respective courier firm would be held responsible for any opening of the question papers’ pack or availability of papers outside examination centres before their real distribution among candidates in the examination rooms, said a source.

Under the system that prevailed till Dec 5, the Sindh Board of Technical Education used to deliver packets of question papers to Karachi-based technical education institutions a day before the commencement of exams, while in the case of centres in lower or upper Sindh, it used to send papers through its officers or a courier service a couple of days before the commencement of the exams, added the source.

A DAE examination paper of Computer Application meant for about 10,000 students and scheduled for Dec 6 was available a night before and so much so that a section of the press also printed a micro-facsimile of the paper before the examination in question took place.

However, the board carried on with the exams with the disputed paper, and at present, an enquiry is being conducted by a committee appointed by the Sindh governor, who is also chairman of the educational boards in the province.

Talking about reforms in the conduct of examinations, the Chairman of the Sindh Board of Technical Education, Prof Masroor Ahmad Shaikh, said after knowing about the question paper leakage on Dec 6, he immediately ordered for doing away with the system of handing over of question papers to Karachi-based institutions a day before the exams.

“Now, papers are given in Karachi only half an hour before the commencement of the exams,” he claimed.

He said the respective courier firm being engaged for the delivery of papers to all examination centres was required to deliver the papers only half an hour before the commencement of exams.

At five to six examination centres in the interior where courier people are unavailable, arrangements would be made to deposit the question papers at some nearby banks from where the centre superintendents or board officials would collect the papers on the day of the examinations only.

To a question, Prof Masroor said that despite the fact that the above-mentioned paper was leaked before time, he did not order for the said exam’s cancellation as it would not have been viable for a couple of technical reasons.

He said the hiring of courier firms and other precautionary measures aiming at holding foolproof examinations would be placed before the board of governors of the Sindh Board of Technical Education likely to be held in February.

He said students would be required to appear in exams at places outside their parent institutions or departments.