LAHORE: The Punjab Assembly was informed here on Thursday that there was a severe shortage of teaching staff in the most backward areas of the province and the government has no plan to overcome the problem.

In Rajanpur district, the most under-privileged area of Punjab, out of 256 posts of teaching staff for 10 colleges, only 110 or around 43pc are occupied and the rest are vacant for long.

The vacancy ratio is even poor. Like, only two teaching posts out of 19 are filled in the Government Boys Degree College, Umerkot; and four out of 22 posts in the Government Girls Degree College, Dajal.

The situation of provision of furniture to the colleges is also dismal as four of the institutes are facing shortage of it.

The data was shared in response to a written query of MPA Shazia Abid. Ironically, parliamentary secretary for higher education Sibtain Raza, who was replying to the legislators’ questions in the absence of Minister Raja Yasir Humayun, was poorly prepared for the job.

He could hardly satisfy any of the questioners despite being spoon-fed through ‘slips’ by the department’s staff sitting in the official box.

Without engaging the audience, Mr Raza would wait for the slip and read it out as it’s giving no explanation and details of the given figures.

The sound system of the House also played havoc with the proceedings as neither the lawmakers nor media persons sitting in the Press Gallery could easily comprehend what little information the secretary was giving to various written and supplementary queries.

Answering a question, he said the department had no alternative plans to meet the shortage of teachers, admitting that hiring of the lecturers through the Punjab Public Service Commission would take a long time.

The mover wondered how the students of the backward district would prepare themselves for their exams when teachers for science subjects and English language would not be available at the institutes.

Mr Raza said they had sent a requisition to the Commission for recruitment of lecturers but didn’t know when and against how many vacancies or that by what time the recruitment process could complete, admitting that he had not come up with reply to the question so far.

Interestingly, in response to a written query about government plans for increasing passing marks percentage this year, the secretary said it would be an official decision to be taken by the government, implying that his department had nothing to do with it.

To another question about government’s policy on regularising services of daily wagers of the Sahiwal Education Board, he said: “There may be government’s policy but the department may not do anything about it, for the matter is sub judice.”

His comments sent the audience wondering if the parliamentary secretary was not representing the government in the House.

ZAKAT BODIES: Zakat & Ushr Minister Shaukat Laleka’s remarks in response to a demand by opposition MPA Mian Jalil Ahmed for distribution of Zakat funds among the destitute before Ramazan led to a new controversy when he claimed that new Zakat distribution bodies would be formed within weeks after dissolving the existing ones.

Former Zakat minister Malik Nadeem Kamran challenged that the law didn’t allow a minister to dissolve the bodies and that the re-formation process would take longer than what Mr Laleka was asserting. It would affect the deserving people, he said.

Taking the comment as an affront, Mr Laleka alleged that 4,400 Zakat bodies could not be formed by the PML-N government for four years while a sum of Rs50 million was distributed wrongly in Sahiwal, native district of Mr Kamran.

Stressing that he was pointing out a fact that a minister lacked powers to dissolve the committees, Mr Kamran responded that failing to form 4,400 bodies out of 24,000 was not a big deal and that a couple of nominations in the 585 committees in Sahiwal might be wrong but not all the nominations.

DAYCARE CENTRE: PTI MPA Saadia Sohail Rana demanded that the Chair order setting up of a daycare centre of the children of security and other staff deputed in and around the assembly building.

She said that on her way to attend today’s (Thursday) proceedings she had seen a woman security staff carrying her infant during the duty. She said a centre did exist in the assembly building but it was for the MPAs and not the staff.

Former PML-N minister Khwaja Salman Rafique drew attention of Deputy Speaker Dost Mazari towards the second polio case detected in the provincial capital and urged that the health minister should brief the House on the issue.

Published in Dawn, May 3rd, 2019