Ghost schools still haunt Sindh education sector

Teachers get salaries at Government Girls Primary School, Lal Bux Mahtam, which was closed two years ago

SUKKUR: Stories about the presence of ghost schools in Sindh keep surfacing, which taint the endeavours the Sindh government claims to be making to promote education in the province under the 'education emergency'.

Government Girls Primary School, Lal Bux Mahtam, is another such ghost school, which was closed long ago due to the apathy of the authorities concerned. However, teachers continue to get salaries while sitting at home.

History

The school was established in a village, Lal Bux Mahtam, near Rohri in 2004 to cater to the education needs of girls in the area. It was inaugurated by the former district nazim and current transport minister, Nasir Hussain Shah.

The school started with a humble strength of no more than two dozen girls. However, with the passage of time, enrolment climbed to around 100 students. Initially, the education department had posted three teachers at the school but one of them later went on leave while two were left behind to look after the students.



According to local residents Ghulam Qadir Mahtam and Nazir, only one teacher was taking classes at the school by 2014 and could not manage to teach all the students from class one to five. Consequently, parents started taking their children out of the school and there came a time when all the students had been shifted to other schools in Rohri. At present, the school has not been functioning for two years.

Current state

When visited, the school was in a deplorable state. The building was in a shambles while the boundary wall surrounding it had collapsed. Closure for two years had been enough to turn the place into ruins.

A teacher of the nearby Pyaro Khan Chohan Primary School for Boys, requesting anonymity, told The Express Tribune that two teachers are still officially posted at the closed school and are drawing salaries for services they do not perform.

He added that the director of primary education, Zaibunnisa Mangi, visited his school last week and ordered the administration to allocate one room of their school to the teachers of the closed school. "We have given them a room in the upper portion of our school but both the teachers remain absent," he said.



The aftermath

Several efforts were made to contact Mangi but none bore fruit. Her office was visited for four consecutive days but she was not available. Her office assistant, Jawed Akhtar Lashari, who had earlier promised to convey the message to her, said, "How can I give her your message when she is not in the office?" One of her clerks, requesting anonymity, said she seldom attends office during working hours. "However, she sometimes visits office late in the evening for an hour or so," he added.

After this, the director of secondary education, Abdul Aziz Hakro, was approached, who could not offer much help. "She [Zaibun Nisa Mangi] works according to her own will," he conceded.

Sindh Education Secretary Abdul Aziz Uqaili was not available for his comments.