Purpose-built building of 160th GCT school inaugurated in Mithi

MITHI: Sindh Governor Mohammad Zubair has explained that less than 40 per cent of the Sindh government’s budget of the previous financial year was reserved for health and education sectors and this indicates one of the major reasons Sindh has been lagging behind in the provision of health and educational facilities.

The Sindh governor stated this while speaking as the chief guest at the inauguration of a purpose-built building of the 160th charitable school made by Green Crescent Trust (GCT) here in Mithi on Sunday.

“Lately the Sindh government identified some 290 small and big projects to be developed in health and education sectors as budgetary allocations were also reserved to do these projects. Not a single penny could be spent on 170 of these projects. This raises a big question mark over capacity and competence of the provincial government to carry out such a work,” he said.

He said that the provincial government’s performance in health and education sectors during the last five years counts a lot as ruling political parties of Sindh and other provinces would soon contact people to solicit votes from them in the forthcoming general elections. He advised the people to question these ruling parties about their performance in health and educational facilities to masses over the last five years.

“Provision of basic facilities and necessities of life like provision of health, education, clean drinking water, road infrastructure facilities are all the constitutional obligations of the government, as after the 18th Constitutional Amendment these all are the responsibilities of provincial governments. But that doesn’t mean the federal government would sit idle and do nothing for the provision of such facilities?” questioned the governor.

“What the federal government could best do was provision of maximum financial assistance to provincial governments to provide such basic civic facilities to people as in last five years the fiscal share being given by the centre to the provinces had been doubled from Rs 1200 billion to Rs 24,00 billion owing to a double increase in revenue collection,” he added.

The governor said all national and international-level credible surveys had duly pointed out that state of basic education in Sindh is worse than that of the other provinces.

Earlier, GCT vice-president Tanveer Ahmed and Siddiq Leather director Mohammad Mussadiq, the donors of the Mithi school building project also spoke on the occasion.

The governor also met 10 students of GCT schools who recently secured positions in Thar Science Festival.