LAHORE – During 2010, around 331 school teachers were removed from service by the Punjab School Education Department on various charges of corruption and misconduct, Pakistan Today has learnt.
The school education department also sent around 67 school teachers on compulsory retirement while salaries of around 1,614 school teachers were also deducted after disciplinary actions were initiated against them. Increments of around 296 school teachers were also stopped by the department and 1,872 warning letters were also issued by the department to school teachers in various districts.
According to sources in the school education department, corruption in schools of the province had reached its peak and around 16,469 disciplinary actions were taken by the department to eradicate corruption from schools across Punjab.
In various districts of Punjab, corrupt teachers were giving a tough time to the department. They said that school teachers, by using influence of parliamentarians or EDOs, were involved in corruption.
According to sources, such types of corruption were carried out by looting funds allocated by the department for development projects in schools. They said that school heads were also involved in corruption or other types of misconduct. Another source in the school education department said that teachers were removed by the department when their corruption was highlighted by their colleagues but there was no system of the school education department to monitor corruption in schools.
He said that although a monitoring department was established in the education department but due to political influence, its performance was not satisfactory. According to sources, various education EDOs, including Lahore Education EDO Dr Arshad were involved in corruption and the education department was not taking any action against them.
The Punjab government had totally failed to tackle corruption in schools, sources said. Lahore school teacher Masroor Ahmad said that due to corruption in schools, the overall progress had stalled and students of far-flung areas of Punjab were suffering owing to improper use of funds. He said that lack of facilities was also disturbing teachers’ performance.
Masroor said that this was the reason behind the poor performance of schools in examinations this year and no government school student could attain positions in them. The EDO Lahore was not available for comments.
