Nothing being done to overcome shortage of school teachers

The program, which is funded by World Bank (US $200 million) to overcome the shortage of school teachers, is likely to be wrapped up due allegedly to the mismanagement of the concerned staff, it is reliably learnt. The 0.13 million applicants for the vacant posts in education department of Sindh are in clear uncertainty, as the gover0nment was even not conducting the test after lapsing around 3 months, sources told Business Recorder.
They said the government had received more than 0.13 million applications against the available vacancies of 13,500 of schoolteachers announced by the Sindh government three months back. The delaying tactics of the government in conducting the tests has created sense of uncertainty among the applicants, as they had been waiting for the last three months after submitting their forms, they added.
According to Ibrahim Kumbhar, Executive Director Officer (EDO) Education Department of City District Government Karachi (CDGK) these schoolteachers were to be recruited with the help of World Bank (WB) which had released $200 million for the same purpose. He said IBA Sukkur had given the authority to hold written tests of the applicants, but due to some reason the government had decided to shift the responsibility to Sindh University, he added.
" We have received 0.13 million application forms but there would be 75 to 80 thousand people who are likely to appear in the test after scrutiny," he added. In reply to a query he said that Sindh University was likely to conduct the tests by the end of the current month.
Answering a question asked the allegations that the new government would select only party followers, the EDO said that there would be no appointment on such basis. It would be purely on merit, he added. "As the World Bank maintains a watch on the education department, specially the recruitment process, there is no chance of bias or corruption in the process of recruitment," he added. He also said that the World Bank had also monitored the recruitment of more than 7 thousand teachers in the previous regime.