JHANG City News

Students of PEF schools awaiting textbooks for two months

From Our Correspondent

JHANG: Hundreds of needy and deserving students studying in schools registered with the Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) have been waiting for free textbooks for the last two months.

Sources said that the annual academic session had begun about two months ago but the free textbooks had still not been provided to the PEF schools, forcing the parents to purchase the textbooks from the open market. They said that more than 300 schools of the district had been registered with the PEF where hundreds of boys and girls students were studying from class 1 to class 10.

The parents appealed to the chief minister, the chief secretary and the PEF managing director to take notice of the situation to save academic future of hundreds of students.

When contacted, Punjab Education Foundation Director Finance Kamran Hafiz said that they had received less textbooks of all classes from the Punjab Textbook Board. He said that supply of more textbooks to the PEF schools, including Jhang district, would begin in the next few days.

REPORT SOUGHT: The Punjab Ombudsman has sought a report from the DCO and others officials concerned regarding allotments and occupants’ record of government residences.

The action was taken on a complaint filed by Deputy District Officer Population Welfare Salma Perveen. In her complaint, she said that she had filed an application for allotment of a government residence to the then DCO Nadir Chattha, who directed his office superintendent to process the same for allotment of any government residence. She alleged that the office superintendent started lingering the matter because many official residences had been occupied by irrelevant people. The complainant claimed that some houses were still in the custody of those officers, who had been transferred from here many years ago.

Taking notice of the grievances of the complainant, the Punjab Ombudsman district office directed the DCO, the ADC and the office superintendent to furnish allotment and possession holders’ record of government residence till May 21. When contacted, DCO Office Superintendent Naveed Qureshi refused to comment, saying that the detailed reply would be submitted to the Punjab Ombudsman district office.