MIANWALI, Sept 19: All six state-run colleges in the district are in disarray depicting the step-motherly treatment being meted out to them by the district and provincial education authorities.

The social circles have described the situation as deplorable and a mockery of the much-trumpeted slogan “Parha Likha Punjab”.

The Mianwali district comprises three tehsils — Isakhel, Piplan and Mianwali — each of which has a degree college for boys. The first two tehsils also have intermediate colleges for girls and Mianwali has a girlsls’ degree college.

The Government Degree College for Boys, Mianwali, which was established at the district headquarters in 1950, lacks almost all facilities with which it was provided. At present, its playgrounds are in a shabby condition and the lawns and botanical garden have become a thing of the past. The laboratories, too, are becoming unusable by the day.

Although there is a hostel building to accommodate the boarders, there is no facility of messing, recreation or common room. Nor is there a regular hostel warden. The students’ appeals have fallen on deaf ears.

Worse still, the students are suffering on academic front as well as only 53 teachers are posted against the 66 sanctioned posts. The classes for master’s in English and political science started in 1991 and 1994, respectively. The Punjab University is charging Rs15,000 as an annual affiliation fee for these classes which the college administration is somehow managing to pay within meager budget. The students fear that the PU affiliation might be cancelled any time.

There are only four English teachers for all the classes from first year to MA. The students have time and again demanded that experienced and well-qualified faculty should be hired but all their requests have gone unheeded.

Physical education is another neglected department which has been running without its head for the last two years and a philosophy teacher is teaching the students. Similarly the posts of associate professors (grade-19) of botany, political science and Persian and two such posts of English have been lying vacant for long. Also missing are assistant professors (grade-18) of botany, political science, education, Islamiat, physics, Urdu and two such posts of English and physical education.

The college library (having a stock of 25,000 books) also is not being run on merit in the absence of a regular qualified librarian for the last decade. A lecturer is doing a part-time job as a librarian.

It is learnt that the college has a share of 25 hours of irrigation water which is not being utilised owing to shortage of the staff. As a result of which the college premises look like baron landscape.

The conditions of other educational institutions in the district are even worse. The Isakhel degree college has been running without an English teacher since 1987 and the girls’ inter-college (having over 300 students) is being single-handedly run by a lecturer for a decade in rented building.

A similar state of affairs is being seen in the girls’ colleges in Piplan and Mianwali districts.