May 08, 2008	Thursday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 2, 1429

LARKANA, May 7: The Decentralised Elementary Education Project (DEEP), initiated two year beyond schedule in 2005 at a cost of Rs5,880 million to improve public elementary system in rural and urban slums in collaboration with the Asian Development Bank, will come to halt on June 30.

Sources in the education department told Dawn that the six-year project was supposed to begin in 2003 and end in 2009 but it could hardly take off in 2005 due to finalisation of certain modalities causing a two-year delay in execution of the project.

The ADB extended a loan of Rs4538.124 million for the project and Sindh government’s share stood at Rs1314.87 million. The DEEP focused on upgradation of 1200 primary schools to elementary schools and construction of buildings for 100 shelterless schools and 1000 pre-primary classrooms.

Things took a turn when the country-director of the ADB, Peter L. Fedon, in a letter informed the then project director DEEP, Sindh, Rizwan Memon, that the federal government had sought immediate closure of the DEEP and cancellation of the un-disbursed loan amount.

The letter said further to this request and based on a careful assessment of the status of the loan utilisation, the ADB made partial cancellation of SDR (Special Drawing Right) of Rs40 million.

In view of the letter, the physical work was stopped on April 30, 2008 and since then no new contract has been awarded for the construction of new buildings, up-gradation and purchase of furniture and equipment, sources said.

On further exploration it emerged that out of 1,200 schools only 208 could have been upgraded from primary to elementary level while rest of the surveyed schools remained untouched. Out of 1,000 pre-primary classrooms only 103 could have been completed while the work of constructing buildings for 100 shelterless schools could not take off even after three years.

The plan of establishing two English medium model schools in each taluka in Sindh for boys and girls did not see the light of the day. Though a four-year teachers’ scholarship programme was launched but it was left half way. The teachers doing B.Ed on government expenses with the assurance of being absorbed in services would leave their studies incomplete and would not get job, the sources believed. It was learnt that MNA Mi Aamir Magsi was recently briefed in Qambar about the fate of the project. He sought documents of the project and promised to take up the matter with the prime minister and request him to continue the project.