LAHORE, March 2: Agreeing with the opposition that scores of schools and colleges in Punjab were without teachers despite the tall claims of the government about the success of its education reform programme, Deputy Speaker Shaukat Mazari on Friday directed the education secretary to visit every tehsil to assess the related requirements of their educational institutions.

Presiding over the assembly session, Mr Mazari also agreed with an opposition proposal that the secretary should submit an assessment report in the house in its next session.

He directed the secretary during the question-hour on the education department to contact local leaders in every district and tehsil to check the requirements. “The government has released a lot of funds and the secretary must check how these are being spent,” he said.

The deputy speaker supported the opposition when Parliamentary Secretary for Education Nazar Gondal replied to a question by Ms Samina Naveed, accepting that many colleges in the province were short of teaching staff.

Mr Gondal said the government was starting recruitment of teachers from this month, hoping that all colleges would have the required number of teaching staff.

The deputy speaker asked the parliamentary secretary to ensure that candidates from backward areas should be given priority in the recruitment. Introduce a special merit for them because they could not compete the candidates from developed cities in the routine process, he directed.

Earlier, a treasury bench member also complained of shortage of teachers in his home district.

His remarks were picked by opposition’s Sheikh Ejaz who said the education reform programme was not effective. “This is not an educated but a confused Punjab,” he said while ridiculing the government’s slogan about its programme.

An opposition woman member said the Government Degree College for Women, Minchanabad, was established in 1986 but still it did not have science teachers.

The parliamentary secretary said FSc classes had now been started in the college where a teacher from a men college was teaching chemistry.