A media report has revealed that a federal government education project worth over Rs 8 billion, the Basic Education Community Schools (BECS), is feeding more than 8,000 ghost schools in the country including the federal capital. However, the Managing Director of the Education Foundation has acknowledged presence of only 800 such schools.
According to conservative estimates there are about twenty-five thousand ghost schools in the country, over seven thousand of them in Sindh alone. Knowledgeable circles say ghost schools
fall under numerous categories as some were constructed not for the
sake of children but as moneymaking endeavours for those involved in
unscrupulous activities. This ranges from turning them into cattle pens,
camps for flood-affected
people, fodder storage centres and autaqs (guest houses). If one goes by government records, most of these schools appear to be functioning. The teachers employed for these schools
stay at home or pursue other gainful professions. The entire process is
facilitated by bribing the concerned superiors to ensure ‘all year
round uninterrupted payment of salaries’. Thousands of ghost schools were unearthed in Punjab by Army monitoring teams but still there are numerous such schools in existence in different areas. And in some areas of KPK, schools
are simply not being allowed to function by hardcore elements on
different pretexts, rather ignorance. This state of affairs is pathetic
and speaks volumes about declarations made by the authorities concerned
regarding promotion of primary and secondary education, not to speak of higher education. We have been emphasizing in these columns that projects like Nai Roshni schools, BECS and adult education
are nothing but sheer wastage of precious national resources but
intriguingly hemorrhage is still being allowed by the policy and
decision-makers. It is time to plug this wastage and divert resources
for promotion of formal education and make officials concerned accountable for huge losses.
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