LARKANA: Nine USAID schools of Larkana district handed over to the private sector for 10 years to improve quality of education are still lacking proper essential facilities despite passage of five months and the appointed staff is also paid very low salaries against the law of the land.
These nine schools are established a the villages of Pir Jo Goth village, Phulpota, Saidu Dero, Karira, Mehrab Sandeelo, Haji Abdul Karim Unar and others. During the visit to few of these schools, this scribe found unavailability of electricity and cold drinking water facility for the little students and the staff.
Books and uniforms are not supplied to the poor students, stationary is urgently required which is being procured by the teaching staff and the school timings have been fixed from 8am to 3pm which too is violation of the existing rules as the government schools are working from 8.30 to 1.30pm. The students said that they drink water from the hand pump.
The qualified postgraduate teachers appointed after lengthy written test and interview by a team of the NGO experts are paid up to Rs14,000 salary, para-teacher Rs8,000 and HST between Rs18,000 to 19,000 but a malhi is paid Rs12,000. The salaries are paid late.
The Sindh government has fixed Rs25,000 as minimum wage which is being violated in these schools. Each teacher has to pay Rs2000 per month for travelling costs. At the moment, education from 1 to 5th class was being imparted but soon it will be enhanced to 8th class and then upto matric gradually.
Reliable sources said that recently, a so-called landlord harassed the school staff and forced closure of the school because his people were not appointed during the interviews in Phulpota village, but the district administration took no action against him despite letters to the deputy commissioner and SSP Larkana by the NGO. Finally, he was given two teachers’ posts through a committee decision to resolve the issue. The same situation also surfaced in Pir Jo Goth School some time ago and it was also settled in a similar manner.
District Education Officer (Secondary) Akhtar Ali Korejo said on Sunday that their job was to monitor the quality of education and they didn’t have to do anything with the disbursement of salaries and provision of other facilities to the recruited staff. He, however, said that they had to implement the policies of the government in letter and spirit and could not violate. Korejo said that he had been told a solar system was being installed at the schools to ensure uninterrupted power supply but they were very late, he added.
Maqbool Rahu, HANDS Chief of Education and HR, who is managing these nine schools, was contacted in Karachi to have his input but instead of replying to a few questions, he advised to visit their Larkana office. Finally, he said that he was instructing Larkana district chief Athar Channa to contact this scribe but nothing could happen till filing of this report despite passage of two days.
Former MRD convenor Hussain Bux Narejo said that teachers and other staff should be paid salaries at par with the government servants and all required facilities should be made available before starting those state of the art schools.
He said quality of education is must because 52% of poorest children (58% girls) are out of school in Sindh and according to the Economic Survey 2021, our country had significantly reduced the actual expenditure on education for the year 2019-2020 bringing it down to 1.5 against the former value of 2.3 in terms of percentage of GDP.
He said the standard of education had declined over the years in the province due to coronavirus but the NGO would have to work hard and needed proper professionalism or else the exercise would prove to be futile and a waste of precious time of the students.