KARACHI, July 3: More than half of the government-run schools in the province lack drinking water facilities, toilets for their faculty members and students, whereas a vast majority of school buildings are in a dilapidated condition and many others need to be repaired.

Over 9,000 schools simply do not have buildings and most of the state-owned schools are in a bad shape, a report recently released by the provincial education department said.

According to the report, out of the 42,536 schools in the province, 22,062 institutions - 51.8 per cent - had no facilities for drinking water. About 9,000 of them were meant for boys and 3,432 for girls.

As many as 21,805 schools - 51.26 per cent - do not have toilets. Over 9,000 such institutions are for boys’ and 10,032 co- educational. More than 2,000 schools without toilets were meant for girls.

The report said 4,948 schools - 11.63 per cent - do not function at all. A total of 4,640 of these institutions remained closed and 308 existed on papers only.

Most of these institutions belonged to the interior of the province. A total of 21,794 schools - 51.23 per cent of the total - have no boundary walls. Over 10,000 of them are co-educational.

Out of 42,536 schools, as many as 8,921 — 20.9 per cent — institutions are shelterless. Over 3,500 of the institutions are for boys and 4,872 are co-educational.

A total of 1,703 schools are housed in dangerous buildings, the report said. In other words, the buildings housing these institutions are in an advanced stage of disrepair. 11,728 are housed in buildings which needed repairs.

A senior official of the education department said on Wednesday the report was prepared after data had been gathered through the annual school census last year. Even though the education department had known the exact number of non-functional schools, no meaningful measures have been taken so far.

“The most important issue is that of the closed and on-paper schools because hundreds, even thousands, of teachers are supposedly working there. That is, hundreds of teachers are drawing salaries from the government coffers even though their institutions have simply not been functioning.”

He claimed that not a single step had been taken to provide the facilities for drinking water etc., which were missing in the 20,000 institutions.

The department was planning to invite the communities in which the schools without boundary walls were situated to help it build the facilities.—PPI