Control conundrum: H-9 college to get hostel back from Baitul Mal

Usman Ibrahim orders increase in FATA, G-B student quotas in capital schools.

ISLAMABAD:

The Capital Administration and Development Division (CADD) has ordered the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) to retrieve hostel and sports facilities of the Islamabad Model College for Boys, H-9, from the possession of Pakistan Baitul Maal (PBM).

CADD Minister of State Barrister Usman Ibrahim on Thursday chaired a meeting at the division where he directed the FDE acting-Director General Rafiqe Tahir to submit a report on the college hostels in Islamabad that are either abandoned or in control of other organizations within a week.



CADD had handed over the hostel, which has a capacity to accommodate 250 students, to PBM in 2012 without taking the college administration into confidence.

The minister also questioned the use of college’s sports complex for commercial purposes. He was taken aback when told that the PBM had sublet a portion to a bank.

Ibrahim ordered the authorities to prepare a PC-1 for the college hostel and hand it over back to the college.

Closed hostels

A hostel of the Islamabad Model Postgraduate College, H-8, is in dilapidated condition and abandoned since 2008.  The FDE says it is too costly to renovate the hostel.

Another hostel of the Islamabad College for Boys, G-6/3, was shut down some 15 years ago. It was converted into classrooms in 2008.

Similarly, the hostel facilities at Islamabad Model Postgraduate College for Girls, F-7/2, and Islamabad College for Girls, F-6/2, are in need of repair and renovation.

The minister of state also ordered to increase the quota of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and Gilgit-Baltistan students in the FDE institutes from the current three per cent.

The minister has also sought details of all the non-teaching male staff at female schools and colleges.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 25^th, 2014.