RAWALPINDI, Oct 26: Punjab has 28,000 schools without electricity, 9,800 without water and washrooms, and 16,000 without boundary walls.

And to provide for these missing facilities, the provincial government needs Rs130 billion to 140 billion but this huge amount at this moment is not available.

There are around 1,000 schools with dilapidated buildings and missing facilities in Gujranwala district alone. Most of these schools were built in 1996.

This was revealed by Task Force Elementary Schools (TFES) Chairman Raja Mohammad Anwar while speaking at a seminar on ‘Education Policy 2008’ held at Gordon College here on Saturday.

The seminar was attended by Secretary Education Primary Schools Nadeem Ashraf, Punjab Textbook Board Chairman Sohail Maqbool, all concerned executive district officers (EDOs), headmasters, principals, MPAs Raja Hanif, Malik Yasir and Ziaullah Shah.

The TFES chairman said some 450,000 people were working in education sector and the figure was 56 per cent of the total government employees in the province of Punjab.

He also pointed out that 12.2 million children were enrolled in government schools and of them around 700,000 appeared in the primary, 600,000 middle and 350,000 in the matriculation examinations last year.

He said in 2007 the primary and middle result was 100 per cent, in 2008 these results declined to 93 per cent and 96 per cent, respectively. Some 11,000 students showed A+ result.

He said last year the government spent Rs70 billion, excluding pensions, on the education sector. According to estimates, the government is spending Rs400,000 on the education of a single child annually.

The chairman demanded regularisation of contract teachers and increase in their salaries, and urged teachers to show good results to prove their ability.

He added that the teachers did not have trust in their own institutions where they were teaching, therefore, they had admitted their own children in private schools.

The secretary primary schools said 34,000 teachers would be recruited across the province this year. The government has set up Rs1 billion fund to award those teachers who show good performance.

He said the purpose of holding the seminar was to get suggestions from the teachers for the government for preparing education policy 2008.

Former federal secretary education Chaudhry Munir said since 1947, 12 education policies had been prepared and every one was very good but the dilemma was that none had been implemented with full force.

He said instead of preparing a new education policy, the one adopted in 1992 should be practised. The 1992 policy comprised of 26 chapters and it covered every aspect of education.

The PTB chairman accepted that there were errors in the Punjab textbooks and stressed the need to review the syllabus in order to remove the mistakes.