KARACHI: While protests were under way against the Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf government in the centre, the Sindh government of Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) on Wednesday was caught itself in a controversy when opposition parties ‘exposed’ its plan to hand over a pre-partition public school building to a builder despite strong protests from local residents, school administration, students and their parents.

The PTI, the main opposition party in the Sindh Assembly, took the lead and vowed to take up the matter and use all democratic, legal and parliamentary means to challenge the provincial government’s controversial decision.

The PTI leaders blamed former president Asif Ali Zardari for ‘designing’ the whole plan under which after the demolition of the school building “its land will be handed over to a builder to raise a multi-storey structure for commercial purposes”.

PTI lawmakers vow to resist govt plan to give school land to builder

Addressing a press conference outside the school building in Shanti Nagar, PTI MNA Alamgir Khan along with party MPA Arsalan Taj said: “The Government Boys Primary and Secondary School Manik Mai in Shanti Nagar was built well before partition.

“It was built in 1930s over a total area of 4,000 square yards. The PPP and its ministers are so shameless that they don’t even care for the government reaction and do whatever benefits their vested interest. But let us make it clear that the PTI will not allow this to happen. The machinery is being placed at the school site for demolition, but we will resist this move.”

He added that the school had formally been handed over by the Sindh education department to a builder and no details of this deal had been made public while the school staff, administration and its students and their parents remained unaware of their fate.

The PTI MPA Mr Taj said that party workers in the area and elders of the neighbourhood learnt about this ‘conspiracy’ and made several requests to the authorities concerned for more information and stop this development but in vain.

The school, he said, was not just a building but also a historical place. It was constructed in 1930s well before the creation of Pakistan, he added.

“And now it’s being bulldozed only for a residential and commercial project worth billions of rupees. We all know who will be the beneficiary of this scam — Mr Zardari and his mafia,” he alleged.

“How shameful it is that the [Sindh education] minister himself is admitting that as many as 5,000 ghost schools do exist on record and they are being closed in the province. And these schools are only those which are only on record. There are thousands of such schools in Sindh which exist only on paper for embezzlement of funds and budget.”

He cited ‘government reports’, according to which, in 15 per cent of primary and middle schools, which are actually offering education in Sindh, only two teachers are performing their duties.

A large number of schools are devoid of adequate facilities like drinking water, toilets, playgrounds and boundary wall, he added.

“This is the state of education sector in Sindh and here we are standing at the ruins of a school which was offering education to hundreds of poor children. This shamelessness would no more be tolerated. The PTI would resist this vandalism,” he vowed.

Published in Dawn, March 9th, 2022