KARACHI: A large number of educational institutions lack basic facilities because of paucity of funds but the department is making serious efforts to improve the situation, said Sindh Education Minister Nisar Khuhro on Monday.

He was responding to questions during the question hour about the education department during the Sindh Assembly session chaired by Speaker Agha Siraj Durrani. The session began 40 minutes late than the scheduled time of 10am as mentioned in the order of the day.

Pakistan Muslim League-Functional legislator Nand Kumar complained the government college in Sanghar lacked boundary walls and its playground had been encroached upon.

Know more: Teachers’ bodies scuttling efforts to reopen schools, says Khuhro

The minister responded that out of over 43,000 schools and 269 colleges many lacked basic facilities like boundary walls, washrooms, drinking water, electricity, etc.

The facilities were already not so adequate when the educational buildings were called upon to open their doors to victims of the 2010 heavy rains who took shelter in schools and colleges, with the result that the buildings and the furniture suffered widespread damage, he said.

He said that a three-year project had been launched to improve 10,000 such buildings and 2,000 of these would be improved during current year.

PML-F legislator Nusrat Sehar Abbasi asked if all science colleges had fully equipped laboratories and if all of the labs were operational as well, the minister said that efforts were being made to make all facilities fully operational but there could be some colleges where laboratories might not have been fully equipped or made functional. If he was provided names of such institutions he would look into the issue, he said.

Pakistan Peoples Party legislator Dr Bahadur Dahri said that science labs in eight colleges of Shaheed Benazirabad were not operational. To which the minister said he would look into the issue if he was given specific names.

Ms Abbasi depicted the sorry state of affairs at the government schools by quoting an incident in which 41 students and three teachers had fallen unconscious after drinking poisonous water in a government primary school in Saleh Pat near Sukkur on June 1, 2013.

The minister partially agreed with her and said they had drunk water from a hand pump installed inside the school in Khabri Bhit village in Tarai union council in Saleh Pat taluka. The school was located in a desert area and tests conducted later showed the hand pump water was highly contaminated, he said.

Responding to identical questions by PPP legislator Shamim Mumtaz and Muttahida Qaumi Movement’s Dewan Chand Chawla that if doctors appointed for the schools regularly attended their duties, the minister said that unfortunately they did not sit in schools all the time and were called whenever they were needed.

MQM’s Sheeraz Waheed asked about disconnection of electricity and gas supply to three colleges in his constituency. The minister said he would look into it and said that it was unfortunate that while gas was supplied throughout the country, it was not given to the very villages from where it was extracted.

PPP’s Khatumal Jeevan complained the syllabus did not have religious subject for minority community children. The minister agreed with him and said that he hoped the day would come soon when subjects of other religions would also be made part of the syllabus so that minority students could also study their own religion. In the meantime, they were offered a subject ‘ethics’ which they could study in place of Islamiat, he said.

He, however, did not agree with the legislator that heroes of the minority community were not included in the syllabus and said that stories about some minority community heroes were part of the curricula.

The minister said in response to Ms Abbasi’s query about syllabus revision that so far syllabus up to class VIII had been revised and the process was under way to review it for higher classes as well.

He said that during the revision material offensive to others, most of which was included in syllabus during martial law regimes, would be purged.

PML-F legislator Mahtab Akber Rashdi asked if same syllabus would be taught at private as well as government schools, the minister said the government as well as private schools, which were providing matriculation system of education, would teach the same syllabus.

MQM legislator Irum Farooqui drew the minister’s attention to poor standard of education in government schools and asked if the schools’ performance was evaluated.

The minister said that though salaries of government teachers were better than those of private schoolteachers’, standard of education was better in private schools because of a lack of accountability in the government sector.

But now evaluation tests for the government teachers were also being planned to assess their capability. While students of private and government schools had the same capabilities, it was quality of teachers which made the difference.

Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2015

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