Heating up the boards: WAPDA fails students during exams

Four-hour long power outages make for painful prep and exam time.

MINGORA:

Intermediate exams have finally started in Swat district, after being postponed from April 24 due to the general elections. Students seem particularly worried about sweating it, not their exams, but the hurtling rise of the mercury in ripe rooms with no electricity.

Extended hours of load shedding make lives difficult, especially for the girls. “We cannot remove our veils due to cultural and religious barriers. It gets extremely hot for us inside the [examination] halls,” explains Bushra Aziz, an exam candidate in Saidu Sharif.  Things get slipperier than eels as “often our handwriting is made illegible by drops of sweat.”

It does not start there. Things get hot under the collar even as they prepare for their exams during painful hours without electricity. “We don’t understand why Water and Power Development Authority (Wapda) observe unscheduled and unannounced load shedding, often for four hours at length,” complained Aziz.

“Today, electricity was suspended at exactly 8am and did not come back till 11:30am. We attempted the whole paper in extreme heat and darkness,” protested Bibi Asma, an FSc student, while talking to The Express Tribune.

Many of the male candidates taking the intermediate exam complained about mismanagement by the examination staff, saying students had not even been provided with proper seating.

“We sit on the bare ground which makes our clothes dirty and it’s uncomfortable to sit on the ground while attempting an exam. At least they should provide us with proper chairs so we can do our papers in a proper manner,” said Arshad Ali, another exam candidate.

However, an official from the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education Saidu Sharif persisted: “Examinations are being conducted smoothly and there is no management issue.”

Candidates in the on-going intermediate exams appealed to the government to issue directives ensuring there is no load shedding during the times scheduled for their papers. The students also urged if load shedding had to take place, they should arrange for alternative solutions.

A total 31,622 candidates are taking the intermediate exams; 103 centres have been set up across the district.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 17^th, 2013.