KARACHI, March 6: More than a hundred pupils of a girls’ primary school are facing an uncertain future after repeated robberies of the school’s fixtures. In the latest incident, discovered on Tuesday morning, the school had been stripped of all of its 14 ceiling fans, tubelights and a water pump.
When the school staff, comprising five teachers, a headmistress, a peon and a sweeper, arrived in the Bhitai Girls’ School (Korangi Crossing) after a two-day break, they found that the locks of the school’s inner gate and doors broken. The cupboards had been rummaged through and the books and papers strewn on the floor, and the fans and other items missing.
The shocked headmistress, Razia Leghari, sent the children back home and contacted the local police to lodge a report.
The school has been looted many times in the past. It had lost its electric wiring and even water fixtures to thieves. However, in the last two months the school saw a lull in thefts, prompting the administration to believe that thefts had finally ceased. The school staff, therefore, started efforts to reassemble the lost things. Twelve fans had been installed and two more were yet to be fixed when the robbers struck again. The water pump had been kept in a room to be refixed.
The school administration‘s repeated requests for the deployment of a watchman were ignored by relevant department.
There are 45 private schools in the locality, called Bhitai Colony. This school, after negotiating many hurdles, finally opened in August 2003 to educate girls of the low-income people of the area. A local NGO, the Friends of Bhitai Colony, was in the forefront of making the school a reality and help it stand on its own feet.
The headmistress of this school is not happy about the parents’ attitude. She alleges that they are indifferent to their girls’ education. She is also upset at the neighbours whose houses overlook the school premises, saying: “Why don’t these people see candles lit at night and sense something fishy is going on in the school? If they wanted to, they could prevent the robberies.”
After the last robbery, the rooms were secured with grills. But robbers had no problem first in scaling over its walls and then breaking open the two locks. Then there was no one to stop them from doing what they did.
Khlid Omar Churra, a well-known social worker of the area, suspects a conspiracy to close down the premises, “maybe by private schools, or by the land mafia to grab this piece of prime land.”
The night duty officer at the local police post, ASI Nadeem Baloch, arrived at the spot and insisted that he personally patrols the area at night. He, however, could not explain the several robberies that have occurred recently.
Headmistress Razia, who is only two-month into her present position, says this is the first such incident in her tenure, adding that a night watchman is the answer o the problem. Otherwise, she says, some day the thieves will take away the benches and desks and the little girls will have nothing to sit on.