LAHORE: The Punjab School Education department will utilise Rs14bn with the help of school councils of public sector schools across the province during fiscal year 2015-16.

The Punjab government has approved recruitment of teachers for around 6,000 single-teacher schools.

This was revealed at a post-budget seminar on Budgetary Allocations of School Education Department (2015-16) at a local hotel on Friday.

The seminar was organised by the school education department, in collaboration with the Pakistan Girls Education Initiative (PGEI) Punjab and Unicef Punjab.

Speaking on the occasion, school education department additional secretary (P&B) Mirza Mahmoodul Hassan said an amount of Rs8.5bn had been allocated for the construction/ repair of dangerous buildings of public schools in the current budget.

A parliamentarian came hard on the school education department for allocating huge funds for schools councils, saying there was no mechanism in place to monitor utilisation of such funds by the school councils as basic facilities were still lacking in thousands of schools.

A member from civil society lambasted the government for not giving priority to the education sector, saying huge amount was spent on the construction of Daanish schools but one of such schools collapsed just after a year in Attock district.

The participants in the seminar were informed the schools department had planned to provide solar power to around 5,000 off-grid schools in different parts of the province.

Parliamentarians, including Chairman of Punjab Assembly’s Standing Committee on Education Engr Qamarul Islam Raja, Directorate of Staff Development (DSD) programme director Ehsan Bhuta, school education department’s officials, members of civil society and NGOs attended the event.

Published in Dawn, July 11th, 2015

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