Moalims

LAHORE: The Tahirul Qadri-led Pakistan Awami Tehreek has unveiled a ‘white paper’ on alleged corruption in Punjab’s education sector, claiming about $541 million given by donors have been misappropriated.

Terming the educational standard in the country as ‘nothing less than worse’, the party has proposed 14 points to improve the educational sector, saying the government must ensure that all children between the age of five and 16 attend schools.

The report issued on Sunday, claims that over $541 million given by donors for improving education in Pakistan have been misappropriated by the government. In Punjab alone, over 900 educational institutions are functioning without any heads and over 500 schools have been illegally occupied.

The Punjab government has failed to achieve even a single goal set for the Millennium Development Goals for 2015, which included 100% child enrolment in schools, the paper alleges. For students of Class-I to Class-V, the set enrolment figures could also not be achieved.

According to the Unesco Global Digest 2010, after China and India, Pakistan was the third largest recipient of aid with $541 million given for the education sector. “But despite this huge amount, the literacy rate did not improve but rather fell and no notable development has been witnessed in the country,” the PAT report claims.

It alleged the least amount was spent on education in the southern Punjab region that was shameful for Pakistan and its rulers, who make tall claims on development in the media.

India spends 3.9% of its GDP on education while Iran spends 4.7%, Turkey 6%, Bhutan 4.9% while Pakistan spends only 2% of its GDP on education.

According to the Unesco report, over 49 million adults in Pakistan do not know how to read and write and 6.3% of the world’s illiterate children reside in the country. In the rating for standard of education, Pakistan stands at 123rd.

The report stated according to some domestic and international calculations, over 25 million children do not go to school in Pakistan. And as census has not been held for 18 years now, the government does not even have concrete figures. Pakistan does not have a single university among the top 500 universities of the world while China has 24 and Turkey has five universities in the list.

The white paper is highly critical of the new scheme of the Punjab government of giving and running government schools in partnership with the private sector. It said unofficially over 5,000 schools have been denationalised and handed over to private entrepreneurs. “This is not the solution to the problem and the real issue is to regulate private schools but the government is not serious,” it states.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 10th, 2016.