KARACHI, May 4: The Sindh High Court adjourned on Wednesday hearing of a petition challenging the validity of certain provisions of the Sindh Private Educational Institutions, 2001, the rules made and the instructions issued under it, and a recent provincial education department directive barring recovery of tuition fee during the summer vacation.

Additional Advocate-General M. Ahmed Pirzada appeared before a division bench comprising Justices Ataur Rahman and S. Ali Aslam Jaferi in response to its notice to the education department and sought time for filing comments on its behalf.

The bench asked him to submit the comments by May 19 and adjourned further proceedings. The application for an interim order to suspend the fee directive’s operation would be heard together with the petition the same day.

The petition, moved by the Beaconhouse School System through Advocate Kamaluddin Azfar, said the impugned provisions imposed unreasonable restrictions on private educational institutions in respect of curricula, infrastructure, fee structure, teachers’ pay scales and allowances, scholarships, etc.

It said the provision stipulating that the private schools’ curricula should at least be at par with the curriculum approved by the government for its schools and institutions was ‘patently absurd and unreasonable’ as the government schools prepare their students for matriculation examination while most of the private schools have switched over to the ‘O’ and ‘A’ level examinations under the Cambridge system.

Although almost all the petitioner’s schools met the infrastructure requirement prescribed by another provision of the 2001 ordinance, it was not possible to provide the same level of facilities by schools housed in residential properties.

The provision of a laboratory nursery, junior and primary schools was superfluous as lab work was not a part of the science curriculum at that stage, the petition maintained.

Yet another provision of the ordinance, the petitioner contended, conferred ‘unfettered and unlimited’ discretion on the government to prescribe a fee structure. There was no objective criterion and some government officials exercised their authority for personal advantage.

TEACHER’S SALARY: Another division bench comprising Chief Justice Sabihuddin Ahmed and Justice Maqbool Baqar asked the executive district officer (education) of the city district government and the accountant-general’s office to explain why a petitioner teacher, Asma Khatoon, was not paid her remunerations for five years.

A CDGK official appeared on Wednesday and informed the bench that the petitioner had belatedly been paid her dues for four years but payments for the 1999-2000 academic year were yet to be paid.

The bench asked the respondent city government and the AG’s office why her salary was withheld in the first stance.

It came down heavily on the officials responsible for non-payment and delayed payment. Non-payment of a teacher’s dues, it observed, was the worst type of maladministration.