Evening shifts in schools from March

LAHORE: The Punjab government has decided to start evening shifts in the schools from the next academic year, starting in March, under the title of Insaf School Programme.

Under the programme, the School Education Department will utilise the existing school buildings for evening shifts to increase the enrolment and maximum use of the available resources. This was stated during an Annual Development Programme (ADP) review meeting on Wednesday in Planning and Development Department.

The meeting was chaired by Punjab Finance Minister Makhdoom Jawan Bakhat Hashim. School Education Minister Murad Raas, Planning and Development Department Chairman Habibur Rehman Gilani, Finance Secretary Hamid Yaqoob Sheikh, School Education Secretary Zafar Iqbal and other official concern were also present.

The Punjab finance minister said education was the focused area of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government. Poverty eradication is impossible without improving literacy rate in the country, he added.

The minister said that the government would continue and complete the previous government s educational projects, besides initiating new projects in accordance with the PTI government’s policy.

Jawan Bakhat Hashim instructed the department’s officers to complete the Medium-Term Budgetary Framework (MTBF), taking the stakeholders on board for better planning and utilisation of the resources. The MTBF will be helpful in future planning and preparation of the next fiscal budget, he added.

The minister directed the School Education Department officials to utilise technical expertise of the finance and planning and development departments along with the international development partners of the Punjab government.

School Education Minister Murad Raas said that the first priority of the department was to improve the dilapidated school buildings to end the fear of the parents, besides ensuring missing facilities in the schools. He proposed increasing the classrooms in the primary schools of the less-developed areas and new school buildings.

Secretary School Education Zafar Iqbal briefed the meeting that the department so far had utilised 48 per cent of total allocated development budget under the ADP while further resources were required to complete the ADP schemes.

He said timely release of resources was required for timely completion of the projects. He said the department was indentifying the districts in Punjab which were deprived and lagged behind in school education facilities. He also identified shortage of funds and delay in release of the funds to the department which affecting timely completion of the ongoing development schemes of education sector.