IN a room full of cameramen, Sindh Education Minister Sardar Ali Shah enrolled his eight-year-old daughter into a government school in Hyderabad. By entrusting his child to a government school, the minister showed trust in his own institution to provide quality education and safety. It serves as an important symbolic gesture. For decades now, public education and healthcare in Pakistan has been faced with a public relations problem, and not without some basis in reality. It was in the 1980s that privatisation of state-owned enterprises and services really took hold, with the reversal of the policies of the Bhutto era. This continued throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. The privatisation of education and healthcare was seen as a means of filling gaps in the provision of quality services. But it was also a way for the government to abdicate its responsibility of meeting the basic demands of its citizens. As private schools and hospitals popped up all over the country, competing with one another for reputation and capital, government hospitals and schools increasingly became an afterthought. Today they are associated with corruption and incompetency, indifference, and poor service. As a result, state-run schools and hospitals remain few and far between whereas private-owned enterprises are peppered across the country’s urban centres. It is estimated that around 70pc to 80pc of all hospitals in Pakistan are privately-owned.

This may all be very well, but one group loses out tragically: the poor. According to the Economic Survey 2018, Pakistan’s percentage of people living below the poverty line is 24.3pc. It is even worse for those in rural areas, due to low population densities and distance. The most qualified professionals prefer to stay in urban centres where there are more social and financial opportunities. Yet the fact is that the state cannot and must not abandon its most vulnerable citizens. The private sector will not provide services where it does not benefit financially. One way to go is increased private-public partnerships. Punjab, which is said to have most systematically privatised its service sector over the years, handed over 1,000 schools to NGOs as a test for transferring another 2,500 — despite opposition from teachers. Over 45pc of Punjab’s children now go to low-cost private schools. Increasing the prestige of state facilities lessens the burden on poor and middle-class families. More persons in positions of leadership need to follow the Sindh education minister’s gesture, thus building up pressure for the improvement of state education and healthcare services.

Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2018