KARACHI: 157 employees of the Sindh School Education Department, identified as ghost employees, have been found residing abroad without notifying authorities during an investigation.
As per private newspaper report, actions against these employees have been ordered to be taken within two days. The termination of services for these 157 ghost employees, including absentee teachers and other staff, has been recommended to the Secretary of School Education.
Report says, Following this recommendation, the Secretary has ordered the dismissal of all absent employees.
The FIA and departmental inquiries revealed that these 157 employees have been living abroad while continuing to receive their salaries.
The DG Monitoring reported that these ghost employees were living abroad without taking leave and continued to draw their salaries. The FIA provided evidence of foreign travel for 76 of these ghost employees.
The Director General also held directors, DEOs, and TEOs accountable for failing to report the absence of these employees.
A new official report released on August 24 showed that Pakistan’s education system is not working well. All 134 districts, except Islamabad, are falling behind in areas like how well students are learning and how money is being used.
The findings of the Planning Commission’s District Education Performance Index Report 2023 highlighted the human resource crisis in Pakistan, where people are entering the job market with little or no education. For many, this crisis was considered worse than the economic crisis.
The report showed that Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) outperformed Punjab in the governance and management of the education system. However, Punjab was significantly ahead in building education infrastructure.
These two outcomes reflect the priorities of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) and the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N).
The report, launched by the United Kingdom High Commissioner to Pakistan, Jane Marriott, and Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal, showed that Pakistan’s map was red on the performance indicators of education learning outcomes and public financing.
All the districts of the country were categorized as medium, facing significant gaps in the education delivery system, to low, where they struggled to perform.
Media sources said that these districts were suffering due to poor governance, very poor learning outcomes, and inadequate budget allocations.
None of Pakistans 134 districts achieved a high-performing rating in the education sector. According to the District Education Performance Index Report, 133 of these districts fell into the medium to low category.
The average score of 53.46 indicates that all districts in Pakistan were struggling with a dysfunctional education delivery system and required urgent attention to address gaps in basic requirements for education outcomes.