LAHORE: Thousands of Insaf Afternoon School Programme teachers have been working without salaries for the last three to four months due to paucity of funds.

The Insaf Afternoon School Programme was launched to provide equitable educational opportunities to children in areas where access to schools remains a challenge along with low retention and high drop-out rates.

The programme was designed to upgrade the existing primary and middle schools to middle and high school level, respectively, thereby allowing the students to transition into higher grades within the same premises. It was aimed to provide easy access to the students and bring about an increase in retention. The programme is under way in around 7,000 schools across the province.

The School Education Department (SED) was to release Rs1.6 billion development funds for the current academic year but the amount could not be released. The administrations of these schools have written to the SED, finance department and Planning and Development Board for funds but after a passage of three months, the schools were not provided with the amount.

The SED officials said the department did not receive funds for afternoon schools and it was creating administrative and academic problems. They said the department also did not have funds to give salaries to thousands of teachers and it would result in closure of the programme.

One of the teachers told Dawn that the salaries of most of the teachers were delayed and it was causing frustration among them.

He said many teachers had left the schools due to delay in salaries.

Published in Dawn, May 8th, 2022