PHOTO: AFP
Moreover, a deal has been reached to start offering worldly subjects to students enrolled at seminaries across the country over the next three years.
This was disclosed during a meeting of the National Assembly (NA) Standing Committee on Federal Education and Professional Training which met at the Pakistan National Council of the Arts (PNCA) with Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) MNA Mian Najeebuddin Awaisi in the chair.
During the session, the committee was told that the government will offer scholarships to students from the disputed Himalayan territory of Jammu and Kashmir. These 1,600 scholarships will be offered at educational institutions operating under the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) in the federal capital.
Regulating seminaries
Officials of the education ministry told the committee that the ministry and the Wafaqul Madaris alArabia (WMA) have reached an agreement under which all religious seminaries across the country will be registered with the ministry and regulated.
Under the agreement, they said that the seminaries will offer worldly subjects from the eighth grade onwards. In the first three years, these subjects will be offered at some 2,500 madrassas across the country.
In return, the government will pay Rs17,000 as an honorarium for each of the two teachers — who will teach these subjects — at the seminaries, they said.
FDE budget
The committee was briefed on the proposed budget for the FDE for the fiscal year 2020-21.
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) committee member Nafeesa Khattak pointed out that the building of a school in Sector F-7/4 of the federal capital looks like it is about to collapse. She added that the principal of the school is also worried about this.
Khattak complained that even though she had raised the matter multiple times, the issue has yet to be addressed.
“School buildings are dilapidated and they are not being repaired,” Khattak lamented.
At this, FDE’s Acting Director-General Umair Javed said that they were preparing a project concept-I (PC-I) for the repair and renovation of some 175 schools in the federal capital. He added that budget for repair and rehabilitation of remaining schools will be included in the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) in the next budget.
Furthermore, Javed told the committee that around 200 classrooms in the capital will soon be linked with the E-learning system. Furthermore, the necessary technology for smart classrooms will be procured through open tenders.
A project to shift schools onto solar power is also on cards, the FDE official said.
Committee member Sadaqat Abbasi asked ministry officials whether libraries will also be built in schools besides the construction of boundary walls.
“Was not a single penny spent on schools in the past 20 years?” he went on to ask.
At this, the education ministry officials shocked the members by confessing that on some schools, no money had been spent in the past two decades. While for other schools, they just had enough money to construct boundary walls.
Errant recruitment in universities
The committee took strict notice of financial and managerial issues at public sector universities including on recruitment on a political basis.
The Parliamentary Secretary for Federal Education Wajiha Akram said that recruitments in the public universities are supposed to be carried out based on the HEC’s rules and regulations. She, however, claimed that recruitments have either been carried out on a political basis or nepotism in violation of the HEC rules.
Akram added that while varsities are granted autonomy, they must be held accountable.
MNA Andaleeb Abbas called for keeping the meeting’s agenda short as it will allow members to focus on issues, adding that this is not possible if too many issues are included on the agenda.
PML-N MNA Mehnaz Akbar Aziz pointed to the ‘complex but serious’ issues at the Quaid-i-Azam University (QAU). She claimed to receive as many as four complaints regarding the varsity every day and demanded that the committee visit the varsity to look into the complaints.
On the suggestion of the members, the committee’s chairman formed a sub-committee to probe issues of universities.
Moreover, the committee sought a detailed report from the Higher Education Commission (HEC) with an accurate number of employees at each public sector higher educational institution and the financial, managerial issues of varsities at the next meeting.
Published in The Express Tribune, February 26th, 2020.
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