The incompetence and corruption of former education ministers and other high-ups of the Federal Education Ministry and National Education Foundation (NEF), who held offices from 1995 to 2010, caused scrapping of the Basic Education Community Schools (BECS) project resulting in unemployment of around 15,000 teachers attached with the project.
The federal government has recently decided in a meeting of the Council of Common Interests to close the project launched in financial year 1995-96 during former PM and Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) chairperson Benazir Bhutto’s second tenure, as the provincial government refused to adopt the BECS project due to financial constraints. On the other hand, striking revelations made by the auditor general of Pakistan (AGP) in the special audit report on BECS project suggest massive financial irregularities, mismanagement and incompetence of previous governments and their educational high-ups.
The government instead of punishing the culprits, former high-ups of the education ministry, who either embezzled funds from the national exchequer or failed to make the project a success from 1995 to 2010, is hell-bent to turn miserable the lives of thousands of employees attached with the project.
The BECS Project was designed to bring a change in the life of children who did not have an opportunity to get enrolled in the formal education system. The Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) approved the five-year project to establish 10,000 Non-Formal Basic Education Schools at a cost of Rs 1.263 million in December 1995. The project was revised in 1998 to establish 82,000 Non-Formal Basic Education Schools throughout the country during 1998-2003 costing Rs 12,235 million. In 2002, ECNEC extended the project by 54 months with an increase in cost of Rs 3.6 billion.
Upon completion of the extension period, the revised PC-I was developed to modify the design and implement mechanisms of the project. Its scope was also changed from establishment of 82,000 schools to 20,000. Around one million children from 4 to 14 years of age were to receive primary education through BECS Schools. The proposed cost of revised PC-I was Rs 7 billion for the period of four years from July 2006 to June 2010. The project has been further extended up to June 2012 without any change in its cost and scope. The project has so far received Rs 3.3 billion from 1995 to 2008.
The special audit report on the BECS project said that the decision of the meeting chaired by the then prime minister on May 5, 2007 regarding implementation of the project by the provincial and district governments was not implemented, which resulted in extra expenditure of Rs 69.75 million on account of establishment charges.
“Rs 56.57 million available in bank accounts of provincial offices of Lahore and Peshawar as on July 1, 2006 were not deposited into the treasury, against the decision of the CDWP. Unspent balances of Rs 28.29 million was not surrendered by the Provincial Project Office (PPO) Balochistan,” said the report adding that the government money amounting to Rs 29.56 million was blocked on account of unnecessary procurements.
The report revealed that monitoring reports of non-governmental organisations (NGO) were unreliable as in 29 percent of sampled schools, activities were not supervised by NGOs, 32 percent of schools that NGOs reported to have visited, were never visited in reality and about 45 percent of schools did not get any training material from NGOs.