KARACHI: Sindh is a major contributor to Pakistan’s inability to meet one of its millennium development goals of 100 per cent school enrolment by 2015 though its budget for education is the largest allocation among all sectors.

This was highlighted by Alif Ailaan on Thursday during a ‘Provincial Budget Tracking Convention’ to review the state of education in the light of Sindh’s education budget.

While most of the education budget goes into paying salaries, it emerged during the review of last year’s provincial budget for education that many a time some development fund didn’t even get utilised.

Going into the basics of budgets, economic analyst Aizaz Asif said a budget helped in stabilising the economy. “On one side you have your resources and revenue and on the other you have your spending budget. The government’s job is to recognise its expenditures and then see how to come up with the finances for them,” he said.

“A budget is, therefore, a complex area for the government. Every year it is presented in June and the assemblies are expected to pass or approve it within two weeks or else the government cannot spend a rupee from the amount allocated in a budget,” he said.

“Now the question arises, how much input do the members of the assemblies have during the making of the budgets. Or are they just there to debate about it in the assembly before having no other choice but to approve it, finally,” he asked.

Member of the provincial assembly Shaharyar Khan Mahar claimed that he was among the 40 per cent lawmakers in the provincial assembly who were not for this budget. “The budgets that are approved are to be discussed after the passing of each quarter. We need to know how the funds allocated for any purpose were used and if not used then why not? But this doesn’t happen, despite it being a rule now. Hopefully, the rules would be followed through better governance,” he said, adding that the budget got approved anyway when the majority was all for it.

Another lawmaker, Ghazala Sial, said that as members of the assembly, they were involved in the planning of a budget and were allowed to provide their suggestions some eight months in advance.

For the 2016-17 budget, the province allocated Rs176.4 billion for education, which was 19.22 per cent of the total budget and the largest allocation amongst all sectors in the province. While the total budget under pre-primary and primary education was decreased from Rs60.6 billion to Rs55.3 billion, the secondary education budget was increased by 31pc from Rs36.6 billion to Rs48 billion. However, the total budget under tertiary education is almost unchanged from the previous year with a slight decline of 0.2pc from Rs28.5 billion to Rs28.04 billion.

The reform areas for which the funds were allocated included school-specific budget, girls’ stipend, school management committees and setting up of model schools in each district.

It was highlighted that 80pc to 90pc of the education budget went into paying of salaries to almost 300,000 teaching and non-teaching staff.

According to economic analyst Aizaz Asif, many a time even something as little as 11pc set aside for development was not used. It was said that if the funds were utilized well, the improvements in schools could pave the way for a significant impact on students and teachers alike.

Meanwhile, Education Secretary Dr Fazlullah Pechuho updated about the early childhood education being included in government plans from this year onwards. “Early childhood education is a priority for which the resources allocation and teachers’ recruitment will be done with care,” he said, adding that all the teachers for early childhood education would be female who could teach little children some basic manners.

Published in Dawn, July 1st, 2016