- Ads asking people to donate cost Rs35m, donations amounted to Rs24m
LAHORE: The much publicised Tameer-e-School project initiated by the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) government in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) seems to have fallen through completely, without meeting any of its initial goals, after the project’s website was silently put out of operation.
Only a day after the PTI outlined all the new projects they are aspiring to take on in the first 100 days of their prospective government, the website of one of their first ever projects from their election manifesto of 2013 has been shut down as the party’s provincial government seems to be trying its best to allow the Tameer-e-School project to die out with a whimper.
The move to put the project out of its misery comes after the project failed to take off a second time, despite getting a makeover and being revamped in 2016 after it first failed in 2014.
According to a Right to Information (RTI) application filed by Centre for Governance and Public Accountability Executive Director Muhammad Anwar, the PTI government had spent Rs35 million on the marketing and advertising of the project. The amount of donations that they had reaped in response amounted to only Rs24 million.
“The website has been taken down to hide the official statistics that the government had uploaded for the public,” said Muhammad Anwar while speaking to Pakistan Today.
“The numbers are so embarrassing that the only solution they could think of was to take down their website. They can give millions to Darululoom Haqqania but are found begging for donations for public schools. Even then they spend more money begging then they end up making,” he went on to add.
The Tameer-e-School project had been one of the PTI-led KP government’s initial projects after they came into power, and much time and effort had gone into massive marketing and social media campaigns. Television adverts for the project had even featured PTI Chairman Imran Khan and former Pakistan cricket captain Shahid Afridi back in 2014.
The aim of the project had been to encourage donations to fulfil the requirements and missing facilities in KP’s public schools. The donation-based project had been launched because soon after the PTI came into power in KP, they realised that the promises they had made in their manifesto were unachievable.
Back then, a senior education department official had been quoted saying, “The ruling party faced an uphill task delivering the promises of its manifesto because it did not realise there was a shortage of funds required to complete its agenda of change.”
Despite the pomp and show surrounding the project, however, the KP government had failed to come through, with the amount of money spent on advertising exceeding the total donations collected. The project had further come under criticism after the KP government granted significant funds to organisations such as the Darul Uloom Haqqania, while continuing to rely on the donation project to complete facilities in public schools.
Recognising the gaping holes in the project, the government had tried to relaunch it in 2016, claiming that the initial run had only been a “trial phase” and that they had been using it to get feedback from investors. However, the second attempt seems to have gone under as well, and with significant losses.
At last count, as per the numbers available on the KP Elementary and Secondary Education Department over the years that it was in commission the project managed to fully fund 55 schools, with 68 individual facilities being completely funded. The number of schools completed was 42 and the number of facilities completed was 52, while 16 were still supposedly ‘in progress.’
Meanwhile, the KP government’s education department was unresponsive to questions despite multiple attempts to reach them, and the number and contact details of the project’s “focal person” and KPESE Assistant Director Rizan Khan have also been changed.