PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government is spending unreasonably large sums of money on the students of scores of colleges set up at unsuitable locations in the province over the years due to political considerations.

The documents available with Dawn show that every student enrolled in 56 of the province’s total 250 colleges costs the government Rs10,000 a month.

The College Wise Strength and Salary Budget 2018-19 document prepared by the finance department shows that the Government Girls Degree College, Haripur, which has 161 students and 126 staff members, is spending Rs50,000 on every student on a monthly basis.

Also, the Government Commerce College, Dagar, Buner district, has reported excessive expenditure in this respect.

Around Rs30,000 is being spent every month on every student of the college, which was established in 2017 and has 82 students and 46 staff members.

“Until now, new public sector colleges were built merely on the directives of the chief ministers,” an official of the higher education department told Dawn.

Rs10,000 being spent on every student of these educational institutions a month

He said the department had formulated criteria for the establishment of new colleges around two months ago.

The official said those colleges were set up in the past without following any criteria and just to please influential people and therefore, the government had to spend large amounts of money on the small number of students enrolled there.

He said in future, a college would be established in the area, where at least 250 students were available for admission to the first years of intermediate and bachelor of studies courses.

The official added that the presence of feeder schools was necessary for taking admission to new colleges.

Sources in the finance and planning and development departments said the public sector universities and colleges were set up by political governments with the intent to appoint own people to posts.

They said every college was established at a cost of Rs250 million, which sometimes went down the drain due to inaccessibility or its establishment near a functional college.

The sources said the unrealistic appointments and establishment of educational institutions in ‘unfeasible’ areas had become a burden on exchequer.

They said the then secretaries of the higher education department were also responsible for establishing colleges in ‘unfeasible’ areas causing a huge loss of the taxpayers’ money as they didn’t oppose the chief minister’s directives for the purpose.

“It is now impossible to establish a college in an unfeasible place,” a senior official of the department told Dawn.

He said buildings of the under-utilised government colleges would be used for other purposes.

“There is an under-utilised government college in Shangla district, where the department has now established the Hotel and Tourism Management College,” he said.

When contacted, higher education secretary Manzoor Ahmad said under the newly-formulated criteria, the establishment of a college won’t be allowed in the area, which had a college in 20 kilometers radius.

“Now, we have set up certain parameters for setting up new colleges,” he said, adding that the colleges won’t be opened in ‘unfeasible’ areas.

Published in Dawn, February 6th, 2019