KARACHI, July 3: The Sindh Board of Technical Education (SBTE) has decided to discontinue conducting some short course examinations and to allow the affiliated institutions to conduct such examinations in future, it was learnt officially.

The decision was taken at a recently-held meeting of the Board, wherein it also approved the budget for the year 2002-03, a senior SBTE official told Dawn on Wednesday.”Now the Board will endorse the certificates of the short courses’ examinations,” he added.

Sources in the Board said as per the fresh decision, examinations of short courses of up to six months’ duration, including technical short courses, commercial short courses, tailoring institutes, beauty parlours and industrial homes, would be conducted by the respective affiliated institutions, but the SBTE officials would monitor the examinations in order to ensure its standards.

Till recent months, the SBTE used to register the students admitted to institutes for the short courses and charged examinations fee as well, which realised an amount to the tune of Rs1 million. However, in view of the falling enrolments in such courses and in order to save time and energy of the staff for regular and big examinations, it was proposed that the practice of conducting the short courses examinations be discontinued.

These examinations were being conducted after short intervals, and officials of the examination department of the Board could not focus proper attention on the regular courses examinations as their major part of duty was utilized in the short courses. The involvement of staff in short courses’ examinations also caused delay in the conduct of regular examinations and late declaration of results, added the sources.

The Board resolved that it would endorse only those examinations for which candidates had already been registered through institutes. It was further decided that institutes concerned would inform the Board well in advance about date and place of examinations so that staff could be deputed for monitoring the process, said the sources, adding that members of the Board could also visit the examinations centres of the short courses.

The Board approved the income and expenditure estimates for the new fiscal year and also abolished certain vacant posts. The administration anticipated an income of around Rs50 million against an expenditures of around Rs47 million during 2002-03.

No increase in any fee was sought this year. The Board also gave approval to a proposal regarding regularization of appointment of Qazi Arif Ali as secretary of the Board.

It took notice of certain transactions on account of advertisements, which were not recorded appropriately. It was resolved that no amount collected from the affiliated institutions on account of advertisements would go to any private fund in future.