ISLAMABAD, March 6: A parliamentary committee on Tuesday approved a draft bill to create an authority to regulate the privately-run educational institutions in the Islamabad capital territory (ICT).

“We have really worked hard on the bill, with the good of students, and others associated with the institutions, in mind,” MNA Malik Nawab Sher Waseer told Dawn after the National Assembly Standing Committee on Cabinet Secretariat unanimously approved the draft under its  chairman, MNA Dewan Ashiq Hussain Bokhari.

“Let us hope the National Assembly passes the bill in its next session,” he said.

Though advertised as a new exercise, the bill looks a rehash of the ordinance issued in 2006 on the subject. The ordinance could not be turned into law because of the judicial and political turbulence that followed.

Whether the bill, when adopted into law, will achieve any better than the ordinance is, however, a moot point. All that the old authority has done since its inception is to collect data about the private educational institutions and register them formally.

There are 690 private educational institutions in the federal capital, with 149,395 students and 9,044 teachers on their rolls, according to the Federal Directorate of Education.

What appears to be the sticking point is the powers that the new authority would enjoy.

Though the functions of the authority that the Islamabad Capital Territory Educational Institutions (Regulation and Promotion) Bill proposes to create will be almost same as set in the 2006 ordinance, it will have power to control the private educational institutions to a greater degree and raise its own finances.

“The Authority shall be a body corporate, having perpetual succession and a common seal, with power, subject to the provisions of this Act, to enter into contracts, acquire and hold property, both movable and immovable, and shall by the said name sue and be sued,” says the draft bill.

That seemed perturbing to the owners of the private institutions. “We have been demanding that the regulatory authority should not be formed on self-financing basis,” Malik Ibrar, President of the Private Schools Association, said when asked for comments.

“That would make the authority start charging our members money by different means. At the moment Capital Development Authority has been sending notices to private schools, in future regulatory authority will also do the same,” he said explaining his fears.

In his view the authority should be formed at government expense.

“We would welcome the schools not performing well or being run by illiterate or half-literate people to be closed,” he added.