Punjab Chief Minister (CM) Shahbaz Sharif suspended former Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (BISE) Lahore Chairman Dr Akram Kashmiri, while his decision is being criticised by educationists and BISE officials all over, Pakistan Today has learnt.
It is to be noted that the CM held Dr Kashmiri responsible for the flawed design of BISE while he insisted to appoint him as the vice chancellor of Government College University (GCU) some months ago. This raises questions about the CM’s judgement of appointing diligent educationists, especially when BISE has been a victim of mismanagement and disarray for quite some time.
BISE officials said the CM spared Dr Majid Naeem who was actually responsible for flaws in the examination system and that Dr Naeem was spared on account of his association with a Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz leader.
The officials are of the view that the CM had asked Governer Latif Khosa to appoint Dr Kashmiri as GCU VC so his and newly appointed Controller Syed Ejaz Hussain Naqvi’s suspension made no sense. The CM and governor had a disagreement over the appointment of VCs of six public universities as both claimed the authority of selecting the educationists. Shahbaz had suggested that Dr Kashmiri was capable of serving in capacity of the GCU VC.
A BISE official said Dr Majid Naeem’s appointment represented the downfall of the education system. He said BISE officials had protested against Dr Naeem several times but the CM took no action against him. Good governance and educational excellence were slogans that would remain mere slogans if the CM kept deciding against the betterment of the educational system. The official said the CM’s vision was beyond their comprehension and it seemed he never looked at the bigger picture and kept floating in a variety of interim visions that were detached from reality.
Another BISE official said Dr Majid Naeem was incapable of running the institute’s affairs and he should be suspended. He showed his surprise over the CM’s decision and said a newly appointed controller who was not well acquainted with BISE’s functioning had been suspended but Dr Majid had been spared. An inquiry against Dr Naeem should be launched to uncover the financial scams he was involved in at Punjab University (PU), GCU and BISE, he added.
A senior clerk at the BISE IT department said Shahbaz should consider the technical errors in the online system which the controller or former chairman could not possibly do much about. He said BISE had been corrupted and the people really responsible for negligence regarding the technical errors were spared. The clerk said the CM should have suspended his education minister who was not bothered about educational affairs himself and did not dispatch relevant information to Shahbaz about the issue. A group of clerks recruited in the tenure of former CM Pervaiz Elahi toyed with the online examination system as it was against their interest because the manual system reaped more monetary benefits for them, he added.
