Tuition fee waiver for flood victims

G-B speaker rebukes officials for failing to implement govt orders.

GILGIT:

The director-general of G-BDMA and secretary finance were censured by GBLA Speaker Wazir Baig on Tuesday for failing to implement orders to waive tuition fees for flood-affected students.

“We will take action against those officials who try to sabotage the government’s people-friendly work through such tactics,” Gilgit-Baltistan’s (G-B) Legislative Assembly speaker told Rashid Ahmed, Director-General G-B Disaster Management Authority (G-BDMA), and Gul Baig, secretary finance.

“Make the necessary arrangements and report back to me on the last day of this month,” he added.

Hit by landslides and floods, hundreds of families in Hunza have lost their means to a stable income; people have lost acres of cultivable land, crops and livestock. In view of their hardships, the government exempted students of the flood-affected areas from tuition fees. However, parents time and again have complained to the government of non-compliance of their orders by the schools’ managements and the respective government officials.

“Instead of facilitating them, they are being mentally tortured,” Baig regretted.

The speaker maintained that funds were available, but deserving people were being deprived of their right.

Baig, who himself belongs to Hunza, expressed his displeasure over the shortage of wheat in Hunza, directing senior minister Mohammad Jaffer and Secretary Food Mohammad Yougvi to resolve the matter immediately.

There are reports that upper Hunza is also facing a wheat crisis, Baig told the officials, vowing that those involved in the theft of wheat will be taken to task. “You should personally check the issues with people of the affected areas,” he said.



Published in The Express Tribune, May 25^th, 2011.