Provincial Minister for Elementary and Secondary Education, Mohammad Atif Khan has told the provincial assembly that the provision of basic missing facilities in all public sector schools of the province has required a huge amount of Rs 43 billion.
Replying the supplementary questions, the provincial minister that the basic facilities under the programme are included the provision of electricity, water, construction of group latrines, construction and repairing of boundary walls, construction of additional class rooms and provision of solar energy.
He said that the provincial government under Conditional Grant Programme has released a huge amount of Rs 9.86 billion. Out of which, he said Rs 3.660 billion has been released from the current budget and Rs 6.2 billion from development budget. In response to the apprehensions of the opposition legislators regarding the closure of informal (Maktab) schools, the provincial minister said that the government is regularising 1000 informal (Maktab) schools after establishment of formal primary schools in the province.
The provincial minister dispelled the impression that the government is closing those schools rather he said they are regularizing them. He said that under a scheme annually 100 such schools are being regularised under a scheme of the provincial government.
He said that the area where a formal primary school is operational within a distance of one and half kilometre will be closed. Otherwise, he said the informal school will continue to operate.
About complaints of misappropriation of funds in the programme, the provincial minister said that it is being monitored strictly and a special committee comprising of parents and teachers has constituted to scrutinise maximum number of schools. He said that the government has also decided to inscribe such expenditures on billboards in front of schools. Earlier, the opposition legislators including Mufti Fazal Ghafoor, Sardar Hussain Babak, Arbab Akbar Hayat, Raja Faisal Zaman and Sardar Aurangzeb Nalotha had questioned the closure of the Maktab schools and demanded its continuation in the larger interest of the provision of education to children.