Officer suspended over village school

Sharif orders construction of replacement building of new school within 48 hours.

LAHORE: Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has suspended Executive District Officer (Education) Dr Muhammad Arshad and ordered action against other officers for their failure to construct a new school to replace of one demolished for the construction of the Lahore Ring Road in Chachuwali Pind, Bedian Road.

The chief minister issued instructions that a special committee of local people be set up to identify a site for the new school within 48 hours, and that construction work begin within seven days. He also ordered that temporary arrangements be made for the education of the girl students of the demolished school.

Sharif, taking notice of media reports about the lack of a primary school in Chachuwali Pind, visited the village himself to get the facts. He was accompanied by Senator Pervaiz Rashid, the senior member of the Board of Revenue, the revenue commissioner, the district coordination officer, and the schools secretary.

The villagers told the chief minister that they had contacted the EDO (Education) on several occasions after the primary school was demolished to ask that he make alternative arrangements for the students. They said the girls now had to travel four to five kilometres to Ludhar village for classes.

Sharif criticised the officer, saying he had ignored the demands of the villagers and so children were being forced to study under the open sky. He said that had there been a problem with a school for the children of the elite, a new school building would have been raised overnight. But no attention was paid to the problem of the children of the poor. He said that this attitude of the bureaucracy was a big hurdle to national development. Such bureaucrats prefer to sit in offices than to solve problems, he said. He said that the provision of modern education was his government’s top priority and it was taking “revolutionary measures” for this purpose. He said that Education Department officers had shown “criminal negligence” in this case. Besides suspending the EDO, the chief minister reprimanded senior officers present on the occasion.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 17^th,  2011.