Confusion prevails over unscheduled summer break

Decision taken owing to rising temperatures in city; some private school managements decline to accept the order, others announce holidays

Karachi: Another year, another summer break, and another haphazard announcement giving public and private school administrations a day to notify its staff and students about summer vacations, now to be observed from May 20 (today) to July 24, 2016 as per the Sindh government’s notification.

The decision, taken in haste by secretary education Dr Fazlullah Pechuho, on Thursday, was made official without stakeholders such as the private schools’ managements being taken on board.

The notification maintained that the decision was taken owing to the heat wave prevailing in the province.

Despite the meteorological department’s constant warnings of the year’s summers anticipated to be more severe than the previous years, the government authorities did not take the matter seriously until the last minute.

As a result of the exclusion, several private school managements declined from obeying the order and announced for schools to remain open.

According to the education department’s steering committee the vacations were previously to be observed from June 1 to July 31. However, secretary education after discussing the issue with provincial education minister Nisar Khuhro, announced for schools to be shut down from today.

All 23 districts of the province were reportedly in the grip of an intense hot weather which had made it impossible for students to commute to and from school on a daily basis.

Private school administrations, however, maintained that the notification took them by surprise and was difficult to be implemented with immediate effect.

The managements observed that assigning homework to children and other closing activities were scheduled for next week, and it was impossible for them to finish off pending work in a day.

Adding to the confusion of staff and students, some private schools issued circulars to inform parents that schools would remain closed from Monday onwards and would resume in the second week of August.

Where the uncertainty irked several parents some other welcomed the decision and hoped the all school managements would follow the government’s order.

Loadshedding woes

The Sindh chief minister was on Thursday urged to look into the matter of unannounced load shedding at the earliest, since issuing mere statements over power outages would do the citizens no good.

As the K-Electric (KE) continued to deny claims of carrying out unannounced load shedding, a large number of residents were reported to have been staging protests against power outages spanning over 12 to 16 hours.

The areas included Liaquatabad, FB Area, North Karachi, Surjani Town, Orangi Town, Baldia Town, Nazimabad, North Nazimabad, Landhi and Korangi.

A resident of Orangi Town complained that councillors would remark that they were helpless when it came to dealing with the KE.

However, a spokesperson for the power utility claimed that power breakdown in all these areas was because of technical faults not because the KE was carrying out load shedding.

The residents complained of their children having difficulty in preparing for their exams, while they had to sit through their papers without any electricity at examination centres.

The unannounced power outages were claimed to have made filling water tanks a major problem which resulted in people not being able to get to work, and students to school on time; this added to the city’s worsening water crisis.