KARACHI: The Sindh Assembly was informed on Friday that there were no ghost employees in the Sindh Special Education Department (SED) as it maintained regular check on irregular and absent employees.

This was stated by chief minister’s special assistant for SED Rehana Leghari during the assembly’s question hour.

The session, chaired by Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani, started an hour and 35 minutes behind the scheduled time of 10am.

Ms Leghari was responding on behalf of Chief Minister Murad Ali Shah, who is in charge of the department concerned but was not present in the house.

Responding to Muttahida Quami Movement legislator Dewan Chawla’s question about staffers’ attendance, she said the department was planning to install biometric system in all centres from July of this year.

The special assistant, while responding to Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf’s Khurram Sherzaman, said there was only one college in Hyderabad for higher education where presently 45 students were enrolled.

To another of his question, she said there had been 20 special education centres in the province earlier but the number of centres had since increased to 50 and currently between 2,900 and 3,000 students were getting education at these centres.

Responding to a question by Mutahida Quami Movement lawmaker Kamran Akhtar, Ms Leghari said the department had 137 vehicles out of which 96 were in working condition while 41 needed major repair.

“Out of the operational vehicles, 51 are serving in Hyderabad while 17 and 28 are deployed in Karachi and Sukkur respectively,” she added.

She further said, while giving reply to MQM’s Zubair Khan, there were around 1,358 employees working in different centres out of which 600 were teachers while the rest were non-teaching staff.

On Pakistan Muslim league-F legislator Nand Kumar’s question, she said the government had planned to set up 12 new centres during the current year.

“The government wants to have at least one centre in each taluka and this goal will be achieved soon,” she added.

Nusrat Abbasi regarding facilities for children suffering from autism said a centre for autistic children was being set up in the metropolis and it would be operational soon.

She said that a special education institute would also be set up in Gadap next year.

Mr Akhtar, who is a member of PA’s house committee on SED, said more efforts be made to provide better facilities to special children.

Responding to the legislator, the special assistant said efforts were being made to provide better facilities to special children.

Heer Soho, Qamar Rizvi, Ayesha Khatoon, Rana Ansar and others also participated in the discussion.

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2018