Hit-and-miss: ‘High-school teachers are paid Rs60,000 per month’

But he also admitted that thousands of schools did not have power, toilets or students.

SUKKUR: The current government fulfilled almost all of the teachers’ demands, which included implementation of time scale and giving them promotions. “A high-school teacher now gets between Rs60,000 and Rs70,000 per month,” declared Sindh Senior Minister for Education and Literacy Pir Mazharul Haq.

He was addressing a seminar titled “Out of School Children in Sindh” at Institute of Business Administration’s Sukkur chapter on Sunday.

He admitted that Article 37 of the constitution stated that education till secondary level was free and compulsory for all children, while Article 25-A stated that free access to education was a basic human right.

“I have been asking my department to form a law in this regard but the bureaucracy does not listen to me,” said Haq. After he said this, the minister addressed the education secretary, who sat right beside him and asked him to formulate the law and submit a summary to him within a month otherwise stern action will be taken.

At the same time, he seemed to be aware of the ground realities of the condition of public schools. “Many schools are without a roof and a toilet. Who will send their children, especially girls, in schools which there are no toilets?”

Talking about political influence in the education department, Haq said that there was a high school in Bagarji, around 10 kilometres away from Sukkur, where 500 students were enrolled.

But only five women teachers were available to teach the 500 children. Similarly, there was another school in Sukkur city, where 27 teachers taught only 123 students.

“This is the worst example of political influence,” said Haq. Giving yet another example, at a girls’ school in Bachal Chandio, in Qasimabad taluka of Hyderabad, 53 teachers were there to teach 250 students. The teachers had formed groups, consisting of 12 to 13 teachers in each and took weekly classes.

“Earlier, we used to curse One Unit for all the wrongs in the province but now almost all the officers in the education department are Sindhis,” reflected Haq. “Then why is education on the decline?”

The acting secretary of the education department, Riaz Ahmed Memon, also expressed his anxiety about the high dropout rate.

He said that it had reached “alarming levels” and the civil society, teachers and parents were equally responsible for bringing those children back to school. According to him, the girl students received a stipend of Rs2,400 as stipend to the girl students from grade five to eight. He said that absence of teachers was one of the reasons for the high dropout rate.

He said that more than 15,000 teachers were being hired soon in different subjects. There are 143,000 primary schools in Sindh, while the number of middle and secondary schools were fewer.

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