KARACHI: Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah on Wednesday approved Rs6 billion for equipping 4,000 schools in the province with all necessary facilities in the next six months.

He passed those orders while presiding over a meeting of the education department (schools) at the CM House.

Mr Shah asked the department to select the schools itself and provide them all facilities such as compound walls, library, teachers’ room, laboratory, washrooms, drinking water and electricity.

Calls for collection of educational institutions’ data

“Make arrangements for solar energy in schools where power connections cannot be given due to any reason,” he said.

The meeting was informed that the number of children in government schools had been 4,249,033 in 2012 which remained almost unchanged in 2016-17.

“How can parents send their children to schools which have no facilities? Once 4,000 schools are improved, the enrolment rate will automatically go up,” the chief minister said.

School education secretary Iqbal Durrani told the chief minister that there were 38,132 primary schools in the province, of which 4,303 were exclusively for girls, 5,309 for boys while 28,520 were coeducational.

“The total number of middle schools is 2,241. This includes 545 schools for girls, 319 for boys and 1,377 are meant for both boys and girls.

“Secondary schools are 1,719 in number while 291 are higher secondary schools,” Mr Durrani added.

The chief minister said the total number of middle schools was far too less as compared to the total number of primary schools and directed the education department to increase the number of middle schools.

“The decision to upgrade primary schools to the middle level will be made on the basis of need and merit,” he added. The meeting was told that enrolments in primary schools were 2,735,156, for which 91,092 primary teachers were working.

Mr Shah said the ratio of one teacher for 30 students was not bad and emphasised that they had to work on capacity building of teachers.

He also directed the education secretary to develop schools’ data which should include their locality, size, number of students and teachers, facilities and their budget.

“This way their problems and issues could be identified and resolved forthwith,” he added.

The CM further said he would be reviewing the progress of the agenda every fortnight.

The meeting was also attended by Education Minister Jam Mehtab Dahar, chief secretary Rizwan Memon, P&D chairman Mohammad Waseem, principal secretary to CM Sohail Rajput and finance secretary Hassan Naqvi.

Water supply, drainage schemes

The chief minister, who also presided over a meeting of the Public Health Engineering Department on Wednesday, said he wanted to see 36 schemes for water supply and 59 for drainage completed by June 2018.

The meeting was informed that the PHE department had launched 223 schemes, of them 187 — 117 for drainage and 70 for water supply — were already in progress which would cost over Rs4.7 billion while the government had released Rs1.5bn for them.

Mr Shah directed the secretary to keep him informed about all the schemes.

The PHE also approved Rs724.540 million for 34 new schemes — 15 for water supply and 19 for drainage. The chief minister specially discussed PHE schemes for Larkana, Shikarpur, Qambar, Tando Allahyar, Tharparkar, Shaheed Benazirabad, Naushahro Feroze, Dadu, Kashmore, Sukkur and Khairpur.

The meeting was attended by PHE Minister Fayaz Butt, along with senior government officials.

Published in Dawn, October 19th, 2017

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