ISLAMABAD: Despite the burgeoning population of Pakistani capital of Islamabad and the subsequent need for additional educational institutes, there is no such allocation in the federal budget under the Public Sector Development Programme (PSDP) 2013-14.
According to budget documents, Rs22m have been allocated in the PSDP for two on-going projects and no new project in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT) has been proposed for education under Article 25-A of the Constitution.
This is in contrast to the much-hyped right to free and compulsory education legislation passed by the previous parliament, which proposed free education for children in ICT.
The new funding covers only two on-going projects of model colleges from the previous fiscal and contains nothing for primary and secondary schools.
Moreover, in the last fiscal year, Rs2.9bn were allocated for salaries and various allowances of over 15,066 employees while in the new budget, Rs5bn have been earmarked for 15,050 employees.
Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (ISAPS) Research Fellow Ahmad Ali, in a presentation to parliamentarians, said it is strange that salary allocation has increased by 67 percent whereas the number of employees has slightly decreased.
Separately, the allocations reveal a halt in private schools’ funding for the new fiscal year, which were receiving Rs12m during the last two fiscal years under the Prime Minister’s special initiative programme for private schools charging nominal fees.
Ali also presented stats on the Alif Ailaan annual district education report 2013 where Minister of State for Education Balighur Rehman was also present.
The report predicts a need of 85 new schools, 4,072 new classrooms and 4,568 teachers in primary, middle, and secondary schools and colleges in the ICT in the next 15 years. Rehman said he will check the discrepancy in salaries and the number of employees, adding that they could have been for some other purpose.
Regarding the exclusion of any new development scheme for the new fiscal year, Capital Administration and Development Division (CAD) Joint Advisor on Education Rafique Tahir told said that the untimely submission of projects from the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) was the main reason behind this.
|We pressed them (FDE) to submit projects before the finalising of budget but due to some unknown administrative problems, they did not come up with any,” he said.
A senior FDE official said there is a lot of mismanagement on the part of their director general and the directors which led to the ‘embarrassing’ situation where the ever-expanding ICT did not receive anything in the development budget for the new fiscal year.
It is pertinent to remember that on the one hand the FDE is looking to abolish evening shifts for equal opportunity for students at model colleges while on the other the number of students in each class is increasing substantially.
“For the last 15 years, not a single new model college has been made while this year hundreds of students were denied admissions in morning shifts because of lack of space in the morning slots and with this you can see the priority of FDE in the budget,” said the official on the condition of anonymity.
Federal Government College Teaching Association President Tahir Mehmood said the priority of the ruling party is evident from the budget for ICT, adding that this is the reality as “we” have always been the least priority.
“No funds means no innovative steps, no new schemes and no go-ahead towards competition and progress, it is that simple,” said Mehmood curtly.
Think of the consequences when there is zero allocation for primary schools, which is the baseline of education in a country where teachers are underpaid and considered the most neglected community, Mehmood added.
Internews
