Landhi School Depicts Poor State of Education in Sindh

KARACHI: The schoolchildren in Karachi’s suburban locality of Landhi receive education in the open air as all classrooms are in tumbledown state.

The poor state of the educational institutions across Sindh is not new but the government had allocated over Rs 200 billion for their restoration and vowed its resolve for making education as common as anything else could be.

However, the Government Boys Primary Sindhi School in the megacity lacks basic facilities such as washrooms and power besides dilapidated structures that are on the verge of getting collapse.

The school has some 150 students enrolled with most of them coming from low-income groups.The school staff asks of the enforcement of educational emergency by the Sindh government under which billions of rupees were earmarked to uplift dilapidating school structures.

The picture of a public school in the Landhi area is disappointing and reflects what importance is education given in the country.

High-ups in the Sindh government claim that they are completely aware of the situation of the public school and the repair work would start soon.

However, what the teachers told was completely in contrast to what has been claimed.“It has not happened overnight. This is the condition for the past six years”, the teachers told News360.

There is no water, no power, and the students are compelled to receive education under the open sky, and on broken furniture, they decried.

Sitting inside the classrooms is a risky job so the teachers have established makeshift classrooms in the courtyard.

The teachers said that education was the basic right of children and keeping them deprived of it was not just their loss but of the nation.Sindh education department was several times reminded by the educators regarding the abysmal condition of the educational institution but to no avail, they lamented.

Such behavior reflects the importance that the provincial government holds for education with the allocation of more than Rs 200 billion in the current year’s fiscal budget but parsimonious to spend it.

“The elected representatives came to ask for votes before the elections but they have disappeared now”, the educators said and complained, “They do not even pick up our calls now”.

However, the empathetic educators got some repair work done with their funds and got washrooms fixed. But, the roofs of the classrooms are still crumbled and can collapse at any instance.Meanwhile, a related government official maintained that the educational emergency was enforced for the same purpose so that no school was left in a poor state.

He assured that the school building would be restored soon and students will get all facilities.