KARACHI: The Sindh High Court (SHC) has observed that the data of an app developed to record the attendance of government schoolteachers reflects that there is large-scale absenteeism.

A two-judge bench comprising Chief Justice Ahmed Ali M. Shaikh and Justice Yousuf Ali Sayeed directed the secretaries of the education, and information science & technology departments to probe the matter within a week.

When the bench took up a set of petitions mainly seeking implementation of the Sindh Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2013 for hearing, IT secretary Asif Ikram filed a statement in the light of last order.

It reflected that the feature of district-wise attendance had been added to the app developed by the National Information Technology Board and initially the same was being tested in seven districts of Sindh.

The bench noted that the printouts of the graphs reflecting the attendance in each district revealed large-scale absenteeism.

Education Secretary Ghulam Akbar Leghari claimed that such figures were inaccurate due to certain bugs/errors in the working of the app.

But the IT secretary countered that it was far more likely that such absences were being reflected because teachers were in fact absent.

“Be that as it may, both secretaries jointly proposed that an investigation of the matter be conducted over a period of seven days before the next date, using Hyderabad district as a test case,” the bench in its order said.

Social Welfare Department Secretary Dr Shireen Mustafa also submitted some documents and contended that endeavors to secure the registration of certain NGOs/facilities being operated in the private domain remained under way.

The secretary assured the bench that meaningful progress would be achieved before the next date.

Sindh Child Protection Authority (SCPA) director general Asghar Ali Ghangaro filed various reports in order to show progress as well.

However, the bench observed that the information appeared to be vague and bereft of meaningful particulars.

The hearing was adjourned till April 3 as the SCPA DG submitted that further details of some of the relevant cases would be placed on record for examination.

During the last hearing, the bench had also pointed out that a graph reflecting attendance of March 6 showed 12,422 teachers were present whereas 16,324 were absent.

However, the education secretary had contended that it was an anomaly arising out of non-adherence on the part of the teachers in the concerned district in signing-in to the app so as to reflect their attendance.

Observing that it was a serious gap in the system, the bench said that district-wise position ought to be available pictorially on the dashboard for ready reference.

Published in Dawn, March 28th, 2023