Castles in the air : Schools that look like nought

Authorities discover ghost facilities in Kohistan

KOHISTAN: Female education remains a priority for the government of Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa. So much so that even if girls do not study at a school, locals never see any teachers walk in and out and the watchman has no idea what he is doing there, the facility is still present in the books.

This is exactly what was discovered when education authorities and representatives of NGO Alif Ailaan decided to pay a visit to Lower Kohistan.

A district education officer said a monitoring team, headed by Alif Ailaan Lower Kohistan Coordinator Hafizur Rehman, visited Madakhel union council where it found Government Girls Primary School Hijarabad and Government Girls Primary School Shah Amanabad to be only a shadow of their past. Rehman said both the schools were padlocked for a long time and that their staffers had been drawing pay cheques throughout. “A wheat thresher was parked inside the Shah Amanabad school.” Things were no different at the Hijarabad school where nails were driven in wooden planks, blocking its doors and windows. “The walls were damaged at several places,” he said.



Rehman said the watchman confirmed that he never met any teacher and that not a single student would walk into the building. The only functioning school in the entire UC was Government Girls Primary School Kolai with only one teacher, hailing from Mansehra. A report of the entire visit was forwarded to higher authorities.

DEO (Girls) Khan Muhammad was not available for a comment. However, a staffer of his office admitted fewer girls schools actually function in the district owing to the shortage of teaching staff. “Students of such schools were shifted to other facilities,” he said, requesting anonymity.

The situation at the office itself was no different where men were working on posts that were supposed to be held by women. “Dearth of competent officials and the conservative mindset of locals are the chief causes for this,” he said. However, the official negated the idea that the absent female teachers are in cahoots with department staffers. “Following a Peshawar High Court judgment, ghost schools were made operational once again and a monitoring system was also set up,” he added.

The last time the anti-corruption department cracked down on ghost schools in 2012, over two dozen such facilities were discovered in Kohistan alone and criminal cases were registered against schoolteachers. At least 50% of the salaries that they had withdrawn were also recovered during the last one year.

Literacy rate among women in Kohistan is alarmingly low in comparison to other neighbouring areas. Former Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal MNA and renowned cleric of Kohistan, Molvi Abdul Haleem had declared female education sinful during a 2012 jirga.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 12^th,  2015.