To save education of the city and bring reforms in the education system, Islami Jamiat Talaba (IJT) Karachi has launched a campaign titled as 'Karachi ko taleem do' (educate Karachi). The campaign will join in hands with all the stakeholders including educationists, students and teachers to bring improvements in the on-going education system, announced IJT Karachi's nazim Hashim Yusuf Abdali.
He was addressing a press conference at the Karachi Press Club while sharing the whole concept of the campaign. "We have met secretary and minister for education but they are not clear about what should be done to help improve situation in the education sector," he said adding that they know the problems but not the solutions.
Pointing out the issues, he said that the biggest issue in the universities is the appointments of Vice Chancellors which are in a limbo since long time while all big public sector universities have temporary or acting VC's. Every year 100,000 students pass out their intermediate examinations, and there is no general university other than KU, some other general universities should be built and made available so that student's may have choice who can not afford to pay hefty amounts to private universities, he added.
Moving towards the issues in colleges, he said that colleges also have the issue of no permanent principals which leads to administrative issues. Classes are not held in colleges, teachers absenteeism is also recorded while absence of basic facilities such as water, clean environment and poor infrastructure.
The schools are no better than colleges; the issue of fee raise has not been resolved yet. "Even after the court decision that schools cannot raise fee by more than 5 percent annually, many schools are not following it," he mentioned saying that even the universities increase their fees in the middle of the session. He also raised the point that there is no chairman of Higher Education commission since Dr Asim Hussain was arrested last year.
The IJT's campaign will involve political leaders, civil society, industrialists and other stakeholders to make model classrooms and will provide basic facilities to the students. Answering the media, member of executive council of IJT, Muneebur Rehman said that they have started the campaign in four colleges and two universities to start with and will expand it to all the public sector education institutes.
University of Karachi, Federal Urdu University of Arts, Science and Technology, D J Sindh Government Science College, Islamia Government Science College, Islamia Government Arts and Commerce College, Government Degree College Gulshan-e-Iqbal will be focused in the campaign in the first phase of the 'Karachi ko Taleem do' campaign.