BECS: NGOs’ performance, ghost schools come under fire

NEF gives Rs28m to 258 NGOs monitoring schools across the country.

ISLAMABAD:

There were concerns over transparency as the National Education Foundation (NEF) distributed Rs28 million to 258 non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in a ceremony here on Tuesday.

These NGOs are supposed to monitor the costs of Basic Education Community Schools (BESC). But most have not been keeping the NEF apprised of their work.

NEF Sindh Director Sharaf Ali Shah stated that during his 16 month tenure, only four out of the 40 engaged NGOs in Sindh have been in communication with the provincial NEF office.

“I don’t know what the remaining 36 are doing there,” he said, saying that they are mulling on a revision of the NGO-engagement policy.

The NEF engaged NGOs to monitor roughly 7,000 BECS in all four provinces, Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan.

A school teacher said that NGOs do not have any role in the monitoring of schools and they have not seen any NGO visit schools in their area. Instead, they send reports with heavily falsified data to the NEF office to get money. He added that there should be a mechanism to judge the performance of these NGOs.

It is not only the NGOs that came under fire. A school teacher from Shaheed Benazir Abad district Sindh said that the NEF supervisors send names of only those teachers to the head office for salaries who “oblige them”. He said that in his district, teachers of as many as 68 BECS have been deprived of their salaries because of their unwillingness to oblige their supervisors.

NEF Balochistan Director Meharullah said that from the 1,258 schools in his province, approximately 584 schools were declared counterfeit by NADRA verification teams.

He added that “there is need to revaluate them”. He added that NEF officials are facing difficulties in visiting Baloch belt districts due to security concerns.

NEF Khyber-Paktunkhawa Director Karim Shah complained about the unavailability of funds to purchase learning materials and salary provisions, which resulted in the closure of many community schools.

He added that the process of refresher trainings have not been given to teachers for the past several years and the monitoring procedure must be revised.

Published in The Express Tribune, January 18^th, 2012.