Fake Institutions: SC orders inquiry into ‘ghost’ schools

District and sessions court judges across Pakistan to survey and submit a report by March 18.

ISLAMABAD:

The Supreme Court has ordered a nationwide investigation of hundreds of ‘ghost’ schools where teachers do nothing but draw salaries and buildings are occupied by animals.

“There are animals kept in schools and the buildings have been turned into stables. This is what we are doing to our children when education is a constitutional right,” Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry said on Monday, while ordering district judges across Pakistan to survey fake schools and submit a report by March 18.

A three-judge bench, headed by Chief Justice Chaudhry, was hearing a suo motu case dating back a year, regarding the plight of female students who were forced to sit next to graves in Gujranwala.

District and sessions judges have been given the responsibility of surveying their areas and submitting reports within a month on how many government schools are working and how many of them have become ‘ghost’ schools or have been converted into stables of sorts.

Rehmatullah, the coordinator of charity Sindh Rural Development Society, who is assisting the court in the case, said 60,000 children alone are not going to school in the rural Sindh district of Matiari.

“It seem as though everyone in the province (Sindh) is educated and now it is the cattle’s turn to read,” said Rehmatullah, who also showed the judges photos and newspaper reports about a school being used as a police station in the village of Jati.



During the hearing, the chief justice asked authorities whether they did not consider the children of government schools their own children. He observed that education was the most important social service and the executive government had a duty to ensure education for all children.

“This is not the court’s job to micromange, but we have to enforce fundamental rights enshrined in the constitution,” Chaudhry added.

The court order also asked the district and sessions judges to look into funds that were being spent in the name of imparting education, the number of students attending schools and the reasons behind converting these schools into hangout dens for influential people.

“The government has failed to provide any answer or details about the state of ghost and non-functional schools, while apparently funds and salaries were being disbursed as buildings remain abandoned or occupied by animals,” the CJP said.

The presidents and the secretaries of the district and tehsil bar associations will assist the judicial officers in inspecting the government schools, while the chief secretaries and the secretaries of education of all the provinces will support the exercise, the court order said.

According to the written order, the judges will also have to investigate why the provincial education departments had not take back schools, which were being forcibly occupied.

Punjab Additional Advocate General Jawwad Hassan informed the court that out of 460 schools, some 266 schools in the province were still illegally occupied. However, he added that orders had been passed to take them back.

The chief justice also lamented that there was a report of a school being occupied by the Pakistan Rangers in Lahore.

Education is a major challenge in Pakistan, where the United Nations Children’s Fund says public spending is less than 2.5% of GDP. Only nine countries in the world spend less than that on education.

Nearly half of all primary school age children and nearly three quarters of young girls are not enrolled in Pakistan, according to a UN and government report published in December.

Published in The Express Tribune, February 12^th, 2013.