DADU, Feb 3: The Integrated Education Learning Programme (IELP), one of the biggest initiatives of the Sindh Education Foundation (SEF), has been facing financial trouble since last year.
Even though funds for the programme were promised by the Sindh chief minister and provincial education minister, they haven’t been received yet, trapping around 1,500 schools between a rock and a hard place.
In 2009, over 1,500 low-cost schools were established in 23 districts of the province under public-private partnership. They were set up by private individuals or social organisations on a 16-month contract. The SEF and the provincial education department had promised to release funds in the shape of second grant on the condition that the programme had to be successful.
In a meeting of Sindh IELP school operators held in Bhan Saeedabad town of Jamshoro district on Sunday, it was said that 8,000 teachers in these schools had not been paid for the past eight months.
The IELP meeting was also attended by teachers and community members while Community Development Council executive director Ibrahim Maznani, and heads more than 30 different civil society organisations also attended the meeting under the aegis of the Indus Rural Research Development Organization and the Community Development Network.
The schools operators demanded that funds be released immediately by the Sindh finance department so that the process of educating poor children in remote districts of Sindh could continue.
Participants in the meeting said that a meeting of the SEF board of directors was held on August 24, 2012. The Sindh chief minister presided over the meeting while provincial education minister also attended it. The participants said that it had been decided that the schools being run under the IELP would be regularised and registered by the Sindh education department.
However, they said, seven months had passed since the meeting but no financial support had been extended and this was worrying the school entrepreneurs, teachers and also students. If the funds were not transferred soon, warned participants, it will cause panic among the stakeholders who will not be able to sustain the schools risking the education of more than 250,000 children in the province.
School owners said that they had leased land and constructed rooms and washrooms in their schools according to the SEF requirements. They said that they had visited peoples’ houses to create awareness regarding education but when the project had become to get popular among the people, its funds were stopped. They owners said that they hadn’t received funds from July 2012.
School owners and teachers appealed to the chief minister, provincial education minister and the education secretary to take necessary action and release funds immediately.