What I am surprised is that all this goes on right under the nose of the board staff.
KARACHI: I am eyewitness to what I am about to describe below. Every student who goes to the Karachi Intermediate Board Office to submit forms is forced by activists claiming to be affiliated with a political party to first purchase all forms from them at an inflated price. They are then asked to deposit the filled-out forms, not to the board office staff, but to the activists, who then charge a hundred rupees or so to get the work done. Of course, there is actually no charge for this at all, so this basically amounts to extortion by the said political party. If students refuse to pay them, the activists end up misbehaving.
What I am surprised is that all this goes on right under the nose of the board staff. Surely they must be hand-in-glove with the activists of the political party to allow this to happen.
Farhan Owais
Published in The Express Tribune, March 13th, 2011.
