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 12th, 2013.
COMMENTS (6)
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According to a report,published in December reveals that about fifty percent primery stage childern and seventy five percent young girl are not enrolled in primery schools of the country. What kind of education system is going on, on the contrary is being said government has a great credibility in the education system,vide the propoganda campaign in form of newspaper's advertisement on daily basis..
No doubt, the matter is of great concerned for the citizen of Pakistan.
The individuals and quarters concerned responsible for existing management are -playing horrible game with the future of the childern of this country.
It can not be compromised on this matter at any cost.legal action must be taken against all those people really responsible for converting the schools into animal's pens
Since the very start feudal lords has been opposing educational activities in their respective areas.
Thousand of ghost school which has no existance on the land but in fabricated papers shown runing and earned hard money of people into billion being spent on it.
Past is witness,it has appeared time and time again that political influenece is being exercised on it.
It is henious crime joke as wel and injustice with nation.
There were Ghost Schools in Sindh and a lot of them are still there. The buildings are used either as the OUTAQ "Sitting rooms" of Waderas or as shed for their cattle. The only purpose for which these buildings are not used is Education. Nothing can be done about this situation as the political leadership of Pakistan in general and that of Sindh in particular does not want to educate the children of poor. This leadership includes the so called Nationalists as well. The action of supreme court is a bit too late.
Oh thank you CJ please visit my school in Okara .Chak number 36 GD. you will find that our football groung completely turn in two rice crop field. We have just three teachers in school which is middle school. And only one teacher bother to come among three. He took all lecture from class one to eight. In my school we have no any room and furniture, We study under trees. For toilet we used to go near by fields. Most of the students give up school after two three years as there is no education they get as parents thinks its waste to send them such school.
Running a parallel government?.Though ghost schools are a reality the SC exercise will not yield any reults. It is just playing to the gallery.
SC found out just now that there are ghost schools in Pakistan. Even your excellencies siting in high chairs did not know or lived in Pakistan for 65 years. What about the corruption in lower courts where ordinary people face unabated humiliation on daily basis. Isn't it happening right under their nose; Superior Judiciary without doubt have plenty of experience of the same yet they still don's know about it or turned their eyes blind.
A Peshawary