PPP govt blames Centre for poor state of schools in Sindh

Maintenance, repair work and provision of furniture to the government-run schools in the province have been badly affected owing to the serious decrease in funds to be transferred by the federal government to Sindh in the ongoing financial year.

Sindh Education Minister Syed Sardar Ali Shah said this in a video message released on Saturday.

“In the nine months of the current financial year, we have been facing a deficit of Rs140 billion from the Centre so from where we are supposed to purchase furniture and build schools,” the education minister said.

“It seems that those sitting on the top and building the Naya Pakistan don’t know that the concept of Naya Pakistan will only be [materialised] when we start producing educated children,” Shah said.

He lamented that in the current financial year, the Sindh education department, due to shortage of funds, could neither purchase furniture nor carry out repair and maintenance work in the government schools although it continued receiving reports which said lives of students were in peril due to dilapidated school buildings in different parts of the province.

The education minister said despite being aware of the situation, he was helpless. “What we could do now in such a situation?” he said referring to the lack of funds.

“The situation has become so bad that we have been facing difficulties in disbursing salaries [to the employees of the education department] as out of the total budget of Rs170 billion of the education department, Rs145 billion is the salary component alone,” he said.

Shah explained that people were often deceived by huge numbers in the budget and wrongly perceived that the government had billions of rupees at its disposal as they failed to realise that a large component of the budget pertained to salary expenditures.

The education minister went on to say that besides the salary component, a sizable portion of the provincial education budget was spent every year to give grants to the Sindh Education Foundation, various public schools and cadet colleges in the province.

He claimed that Rs15 billion had been reserved as the development budget of the provincial education department but of the sum, funds could only be spent in the first two quarters of the current financial year owing to the less release of funds from the federal divisible pool.

Sindh accounted for 65 per cent revenue generated in the country and the taxes collected from the province had been vital for meeting expenditures of the rest of the country, Shah said. “In such a situation, Sindh should be given its due right,” he remarked, adding that “instead, we have to face abusive language whenever we demand our due share.”

“It seems that those sitting in the Centre don’t want to work and nor they know how to deliver. They are least interested in resolving basic issues of masses related to health and education,” the education minister said.

Commenting on the reports of cheating and question paper leaks during the board examinations, Shah said he had written to the chief minister to constitute a high-level committee to thoroughly investigate the affairs of the educational boards in the province to know the reasons behind frequent instances of leaks of question papers’ contents during the annual examinations.

He said whosoever was behind the unauthorised leaks of the question papers should be penalised irrespective of his or her authority or influence.