KARACHI: Senior Sindh Minister Nisar Ahmad Khurho has termed the statement of Senator Rehman Malik that the Pakistan Peoples Party was considering resigning from parliament his “personal opinion”.

Speaking to reporters after inking a memorandum of understanding to hand over the Public School Ghotki to the Institute of Business Administration in Sukkur, he said that such decisions were taken at the highest forum of the party and not by opinions or through statements.

He also denied that the military leadership had asked the government to hand over any minister to them.

He also made it clear that the PPP’s objections against the Election Commission of Pakistan continued to stand, but it would not leave the field of local government elections open whether the ECP members resigned or not.

Mr Khuhro, who also holds the portfolio of education, said that he did not want to make any comment about Dr Zulfiqar Mirza, who he said was going through the process of retribution.

Regarding the Dubai visit of the Sindh chief minister, he said he did not see any harm in visiting Dubai by the CM.

Earlier, highlighting the measures being taken by his department for improving the standard of education and opening the closed school, Mr Khuhro said that the Sukkur IBA was an institution of quality education and the purpose of handing over the Public School Ghotki to it was to provide better opportunities to the students of far-flung areas.

He said in Sindh out of 25 English medium schools, 17 were under-construction and one at Shaheed Benazirabad was about to be completed.

He said in different districts of Sindh 110 new schools were also being constructed with the cooperation of the USAID, while work on 14-room schools in eight flood-affected districts would soon be completed.

Similarly, the government had embarked on providing basic facilities to 10,000 schools in the next three years while during the current financial year 1,000 schools would be equipped with basic facilities, he added.

In reply to a question, he said that in order to ensure presence of the teachers in schools the biometric registration of 84,000 teachers had been completed.

He said that the biometric registration would not only ensure the presence of teachers but their salaries would also be disbursed through the system, which would also help in checking ghost employees.

In response to another question, Mr Khuhro said that out of 5,000 closed schools, 3,000 had been opened and efforts were on to open the remaining closed schools.

The MoU signing ceremony was held at the chamber of the senior minister where Education Secretary Fazlullah Pechuho and Director Sukkur IBA Nisar Siddiqui were also present.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2015

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