School education director suspended for not inspecting schools

During his surprise visit to the Malir and Korangi districts on Wednesday, Justice (retd) Maqbool Baqar suspended the services of the school education director and the education chief monitoring officer (CMO) for their failure to conduct inspections of schools and improve their standard.

After visiting a public school in Landhi, the Sindh caretaker chief minister remarked that the education department’s officials have completely failed to improve the educational atmosphere of schools, and none of them is willing to inspect their field offices for resolving the schools’ issues.

Baqar earlier went to the Ibrahim Hyderi assistant commissioner’s office at Quaidabad where all the District Malir sub-registrars have offices. He found that none of the offices have had electricity for a year, so they have been using generators.

He also found the offices to be filthy, with heaps of dust in the corridors. He directed Karachi Commissioner Saleem Rajput to get the electricity supply to the offices restored.

Baqar checked the records of the Malir, Korangi, Bin Qasim, Landhi and Ibrahim Hyderi towns’ sub-registrar offices, and directed them to dispose of their pending work. He found that Tapedar Arshad Iqbal was absent from duty, so he placed his services under suspension.

Later, when he saw a dump truck loaded with sand and gravel cutting across his vehicle, Baqar directed the Malir SSP to impound the dumper, and stop the illegal lifting of sand and gravel. He also directed the Malir deputy commissioner to get the entire area of the Quaidabad Chowk Flyover cleaned up.

On his visit to the NA Abbasi Government Boys Secondary School, Landhi, Baqar found that only 42 of the 252 students enrolled there were present.

When the headmaster was asked about the mechanism to bring the absentees back to school, he failed to give any satisfactory reply. Baqar saw the classrooms and found most of them lacking furniture, even though the school was provided with ample furniture.

On his inspection of the laboratory, he found that the new furniture provided to the school had been dumped there, and that the school has a computer lab but computers have not been provided to the school.

He also found that the school’s toilet has no water, and the science lab is not functional. He saw layers of dust on the windows, doors, tables and even on the floors.

He then contacted School Education Director Yar Mohammad, the district education officer, the CMO and the town education officers, but found that none of them have ever inspected the school, even though the CM issued written directives to all the departments to conduct inspections and prepare reports on them.

Baqar observed that if the school’s condition was pathetic, why would students turn up there to get an education. He then suspended the school education director and the CMO, directing them to report to the Sindh Secretariat.

The interim CM also visited the Girls College, Landhi 3½, where 570 students are enrolled and being offered pre-engineering and pre-medical intermediate, BSc and BCom classes.

The college principal said that only 13 students are enrolled in pre-engineering. When asked the reason, she said girls are less interested in engineering. The other reason she gave is the unavailability of mathematics lecturers for the past many years.

Baqar visited the chemistry and botany labs, where hardly two practical sessions were held. He found the college to be not quite clean. The principal explained that no janitorial staff was posted at the college.

The colleges secretary informed the caretaker CM that the Sindh High Court had banned recruitment, so sweepers had not been hired. Baqar called the executive engineer of the education department and directed him to get repairs made at the school. He also ordered the installation of good-quality grills on the widows.