The five-year Education Sector Plan (ESP) in KP government has launched a pilot program to eliminate discrepancies in teacher salaries. This is part of the Rs 593 billion reforms budget that the government has prioritized for quality education. Under this new budgeting and expenditure system a Disbursing Officer (DO) code will help track all payments made by the education department. 464 higher secondary schools and 2,158 high schools out of 27,121 public sector schools are presently being tracked.
This program is being rolled out across KP so that there will be a transparent real-time system available on an online portal for all schools. Minister E&SE Atif Khan said that this will launch an era of an end to ghost teachers and teacher absenteeism. There will be enhanced financial equity among school. The mechanism acts as a viable planning tool on a single standardized platform. It also provides improved monitoring of all financial transactions and helps with collaboration among stakeholders.
"We are very pleased with this intervention because it will lead to an end to all embezzlement, misappropriation and irregularities that have happened in the past and will ensure full public disclosure of essential fiscal and personnel data of each school," said Atif Khan, provincial minister of education in KP. Given its size and proximity to KPs provincial capital, Karak served as the ideal pilot city. Within four months of its launch, more than 30 Ghost Teachers were identified in District Karak. To scale this up across the province, two committees have been recommended at both district and province level. Within a few months the pilot will extend to Swat, Dera Ismail Khan, Bannu, Abbottabad, Charsadda, Nowshera, Chitral and Battagram.
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