KARACHI: The Sindh High Court on Monday expressed its displeasure over the progress report of the ongoing anti-encroachment operation across the province to retrieve lands of the irrigation department. It directed the provincial authorities to file a progress report on each hearing with the signatures of the executing official and corroboratory documents.

A three-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Iqbal Kalhoro also expressed its dissatisfaction over the replies submitted by Irrigation Minister Sohail Anwar Siyal, Chief Secretary Syed Mumtaz Ali Shah and Irrigation Secretary Rafique Ahmed Buriro on contempt notices issued to them during the previous hearing for not complying with its earlier order.

On a request by the advocate general, the bench gave them an opportunity to submit their replies again on Feb 15 and also be in attendance.

The bench observed that the progress report filed by the advocate general demonstrated that hardly any progress had been made so far and despite directives given in the earlier order, the report was filed without requisite signatures.

On Jan 18, the court had ordered that the entire exercise of the removal of encroachments from the lands of the irrigation department be completed by June 30 and the minister and others were directed to submit a progress report on the next date of hearing.

Closed schools and status of teachers

A two-judge bench headed by Justice Mohammad Ali Mazhar directed the education secretary to inform it that how many schools were lying closed in the province and what efforts were being made to reopen them.

It also asked the secretary to apprise it by March 10 about the status of these [closed] schools’ teachers and whether they were being paid their salaries.

When the bench took up a set of petitions regarding children’s education for hearing, the education and literacy department secretary, Ahmed Bux Narejo, submitted a compliance report. The counsel for the petitioners sought some time to go through it.

In the report, the secretary contended that in compliance with the earlier court order, the department took several steps for improvement of education in Sindh and to bring out-of-school children to schools.

The report further asserted that in line with Article 25-A of the Constitution that provides for free and compulsory education to all children between five and 16 years of age, the Sindh government had promulgated the Sindh Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2013 and was providing education to 4.5 million children in the province.

It said that in order to address the issue of gender disparity in enrolment and retention rate, an amount of Rs800m had been allocated for girls’ stipend this year, adding that another amount of Rs1,200m had also been allocated to provide funding to school management committees for functional schools to enable them to undertake minor repairs.

The report further said that according to the Pakistan Education Statistics 2016-17, there were over six million out-of-school children in Sindh and, therefore, the education department in collaboration with the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Islamic Development Bank, USAID and other institutions was initiating a project with focus on improving access of poor children to post-primary schooling. The aim was to upgrade around 600 primary schools to secondary level in order to curb high dropout rate, the report maintained.

Three out-of-school children committees — one each at divisional, district and taluka level — had been constituted, it added.

Published in Dawn, February 9th, 2021