Queuing to get into school

Parents stand outside Nadra offices for B-forms but return disappointed.

SIALKOT: Residents in Sialkot have been standing in long queues for several days in order to receive B-forms from national database registration authority (Nadra) offices. The parents of fifth and eighth grade students say that they have spent days coming to the Nadra offices so that they can complete the admission and registration forms for their children. “This is my third visit to the Sambrial office and I still haven’t gotten a B-form for my son,” said Muhammad Ishtiaq, parent of an eighth grade student.

B-forms were considered a pre-requisite to admission for sixth and ninth grade this year by the board of intermediate and secondary education (BISE) in Gujranwala for all students hoping to continue on to the next grade. Parents of students have complained that Nadra officials have been delaying the distribution process and have caused severe delays.

“I have been making daily trips to the office for weeks and I still don’t have a form for my daughter. The application deadlines are approaching and yet we cannot submit forms,” said Shumaila Khalid, the mother of an eighth grader.

All Nadra offices in the district are crowded with scores of parents and students trying to procure B-forms but the office administration has been extremely sluggish in handing out forms in time. Locals have begun protesting outside Nadra offices throughout the district and said that they would appeal to the federal government to change the requirements if the Nadra officials could not deliver.

Nadra officials have already declared that computerised birth certificates are necessary in order to apply for a B-form and this condition has also been causing great problems as locals first have to go to the local union council offices to obtain a computerised birth certificate.

“They are making us jump through countless hoops and still don’t bother to give us a B-form in time,” said a parent Sohail, adding that everyone had to pay a fee to obtain a computerised birth certificate and later had to pay the urgent fee of Rs500 for every B-form. “This is just the government’s way of making money,” Sohail said.

Several people complained that they had gotten the names of their children registered in the union councils but these records were no longer available. “Our children are paying for the negligence of the local administration as we have to wait in line after line without being given a certificate,” a parent Nadeem said, adding that fresh entry records of their children at the union councils normally took over three weeks.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 8^th, 2010.