Supplemental waste

A recent report in this newspaper highlighted how 76 government colleges in Sindh obtained a combined Rs150 million in additional funding in FY2017-18 despite only having a few dozen students enrolled in each. The funds were approved without much of the required due diligence or oversight.

One example is of the Government Girls Degree College Punjabi Club in Karachi, which was given an additional Rs3.8 million above its approved budget of Rs5.47 million. The college only has 48 students enrolled. Shaheed Benazirabad’s Government SS College was given Rs5.5 million on top of the Rs6.9 million allocated budget in the same fiscal year, despite a modest 333 enrolled students. For comparison, the Government Degree College Gulshan-e-Iqbal’s revised allocation helped double its budget to Rs5 million, despite the college having slightly more than 4,000 students on roll. The PECHS Government College for Women only increased its allocated budget from Rs3.2 million to Rs5 million in 2015-16, from Rs7.3 million to Rs11.3 million in 2016-17 and from Rs11 million to Rs11.5 million in 2017-18 despite having around 3,000 students enrolled in each of these years.

While an inquiry is now ongoing, it is quite clear that the additional allocations were all over the place, and so was the criterion, if any. Also of interest is the fact that in many cases, the additional funds were far greater than the claimed additional expenses against which they were allocated. The story is an unfortunate reflection of the many problems plaguing Pakistan’s education system. While many parents go to court to protest the unaffordable fees in private schools, public schools, which are affordable, are being misallocated funds which, if properly audited, could be used to drastically improve the standard of education and give students and parents a viable alternative. It is not that public education doesn’t need more funding — it emphatically does. But education managers also need to use the funds already available more responsibly.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 3^rd, 2019.

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