The government has conceded that the non-formal education programme was the biggest fraud to the nation in the name of literacy promotion. This was stated by the Education Minister, Javed Ashraf Qazi who publicly admitted recently that Non-Formal Basic Education Schools (NFBES) project was fraud as no school exists on ground for which NGOs had been paid millions of rupees.
However, the minister did not expose the corrupt officials without whose connivance the NGOs could not commit fraud and get away with it.
One also wonders to see vigorous pursuance of the ministry to get passed the revised PC-1 of NFBES project and raises questions whether it (ministry) got rid itself of NGOs and officials in the education ministry and proceeding against them before submitting the project.
He was of the view that education system needed to be revamped to turn it into demand driven. Education sector, according to him, had remained low priority in the past and even the recent increase in the budget was for higher education and not for basic education.
It may be recalled that the planning commission (PC) had not taken up the PC-1 of Rs 26.795 billion submitted by the ministry to central development working party (CWDP) meetings for the establishment of NFBE schools.
The CWDP had returned the PC-1 to the ministry with suggestions that it should be revised for implementation in phases and making obligatory for these schools to have their own infrastructure for making the plan sustainable. The plan for establishing 82,000 home-based schools, in areas where separate primary schools for girls were non-existent, was initiated under the Prime Minister's Literacy Commission in 1995.
Though 10,000 schools, out of 82,000 had been established, yet these were not functioning properly mainly because of non-provision of funds by the government and the distribution of schools among the favourite organisations.
The project, which was to be completed in five years ending 2002-03, had been prolonged for indefinite period.
The recent revelation of the minister about factual position of these 10,000 schools is an eye opener and one is compelled to think what had stopped the ministry from taking action against officials and NGOs involved.