Govt to seal schools paying less than Rs25k to teachers: minister

The Sindh government will seal private schools paying less than minimum wage of Rs25,000 to teachers, said Education Minister Sardar Ali Shah on Wednesday.

Speaking at an event in a girls college in Sukkur district Shah said the provincial government has fixed the minimum wage at Rs25,000 per month and any school found flouting the law will face the action.

He reiterated that out of around 47,000 schools functioning under his ministry some 11,000 schools are such which were not built to serve the purpose of educating the children. He claimed that the Pakistan Peoples Party’s government had inherited such schools.

“Every year the budget is allocated for repair and maintenance of these schools. This is why we are removing such schools from our system.” According to him, the final survey of 7,000 of these schools has been done so far and out of this, total around 5,000 schools have emerged as non-viable.

“We want to save this wasteful expenditure so that we can channel our resources over the functional schools.”

The education minister informed that a new policy is also being introduced for the government colleges under which the budget allocation for the colleges will be based on enrollment.

Shah said the female candidates vying for the government teaching jobs have been offered the facility of qualifying the test by scoring 5% lesser marks in comparison to the male candidates.

He justified this relaxation citing shortage of female teachers in the government schools. The ministry will also take action against the private schools which excessively charge students in the name of extra curricular activities.