Sindh Education Foundation (SEF) has been facing acute shortage of funds as, according to sources, the Foundation received only Rs 250 million as against its current fiscal year's allocation of Rs 1 billion under Integrated Education Learning Programme (IELP), it was learnt on Wednesday.
Even during FY 2012-13, the SEF under the IELP had received only Rs 350 million as against its allocation of Rs 1 billion, while the remaining amount reportedly lapsed owing to bureacrartic wrangling. The SEF under its IELP has been running some 1,000 primary, elementary and secondary schools in various districts of Sindh. Besides, Sindh Education department has also assigned the task of re-opening 300 closed schools to the SEF under the same programme.
Informed sources told this correspondent that there are around 5,000 closed schools in the province and the Education department had earlier asked the Revenue officials to get these schools identified and re-opened. The SEF recently got an advertisement published in various newspapers, asking the individuals and NGOs to apply for the adoption of schools lying closed since long. These 300 schools were lying closed in Dadu, Jamshoro, Shaheed Benazirabad, Tando Mohammad Khan, Larkana, Khairpur Mirs, Sukkur, Sanghar, Thatta, Naushero Feroze and other districts.
Referring to IELP, sources said that this programme was initiated in financial year 2010-11, but it was delayed following floods hit the province in mid- 2010. However, the programme was taken up again in 2012 and, at present, some 1,000 schools were being run in various parts of the Sindh. With the re-opening of 300 schools, the number of existing schools would reach to 1300, sources said. He said that SEF was extending financial and technical support to 1300 new and existing primary schools.
Comments
Comments are closed.