KARACHI, Feb 21: The Sindh Professors and Lecturers’ Association (SPLA) on Tuesday charged that the black sheep in the education department had exaggerated figures regarding the new enrolments in primary schools of Sindh to extort funds by hoodwinking the donor agencies.
SPLA President Prof Syed Riaz Ahsan and Secretary-General Prof Liaquat Aziz Solangi, in a joint statement said that the enrolment figures in the province last year stood at 0.7 million, but this year the education department officials claimed that the figures had jumped to 7.6 million.
They alleged that this figure had been exaggerated, as every EDO, ADO and supervisor of the district government got monetary incentives of Rs200, Rs100 and Rs50, respectively, per new student enrolled during the enrolment-raising campaign. They said that Rs60 million were also spent on advertisement for the campaign.
The SPLA leaders charged that due to the lack of interest of high-ups in the Sindh education department, corruption, mismanagement and nepotism were on the rise within the department.
The SPLA leaders claimed that due to this malpractice the projects funded by the World Bank, Asian Development Bank and other donor agencies for promoting literacy and providing facilities to students had failed to deliver.
They demanded of the chief justice of Sindh High Court to take a suo moto action into the state of affairs in the Sindh education department, so that massive corruption in the name of education could be stopped.
Meanwhile, the SPLA announced that its general body meeting scheduled at the Government College of Education Sukkur on Feb 23 would now be held on Feb 28 and later a rally would be staged.—PPI
