Education in Balochistan: Misplaced Priorities Amid Great Challenges

The edu­ca­tion sec­tor in Balochis­tan is in a sor­ry state while the gov­ern­ment is only rely­ing on rhetor­i­cal promis­es about improv­ing the sit­u­a­tion. Inde­pen­dent stud­ies car­ried out about the scale of the prob­lem paint an abysmal pic­ture.

Out of 3.6 mil­lion, only 1.3 mil­lion chil­dren go to school in Balochis­tan. A stag­ger­ing num­ber of 7,300 teach­ing posi­tions are still vacant in the province, out of which 2,200 are those of sec­ondary schools. Pak­istan Social and Liv­ing Mea­sure­ment Sur­vey (2011–12) states that Balochis­tan has a lit­er­a­cy rate of 46% as com­pared to 58% in the entire coun­try. The Annu­al Sta­tus of Edu­ca­tion Report (ASER) 2013 makes shock­ing rev­e­la­tions about the state of edu­ca­tion in Balochis­tan. Accord­ing to this report; 71 per­cent schools in Balochis­tan have no access to drink­ing water while there is no toi­let facil­i­ty In 83% of the schools.This sug­gests that the already estab­lished edu­ca­tion­al insti­tutes are in dire need of fund­ing from the provin­cial exche­quer.

In the annu­al bud­get for fis­cal year 2014–15, the edu­ca­tion bud­get has been increased to 26%. The gov­ern­ment has announced the estab­lish­ment of a num­ber of schools, col­leges and a few uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus­es. While these efforts of the Balochis­tan gov­ern­ment are com­mend­able but the bit­ter truth is that they alone will not solve the major prob­lems faced by the edu­ca­tion sec­tor. The exist­ing edu­ca­tion­al insti­tutes face a lot of prob­lems, as stat­ed above. There is no sig­nif­i­cant allo­ca­tion of funds by the gov­ern­ment to address those prob­lems. The new edu­ca­tion­al insti­tutes will take years to com­plete and even after that their future is sub­ject to release of funds by forth­com­ing gov­ern­ments. In the present cir­cum­stances the first pri­or­i­ty should be to cater to the needs of exist­ing edu­ca­tion­al estab­lish­ments rather than divert­ing funds to a num­ber of new estab­lish­ments.

The cur­rent polit­i­cal lead­er­ship of Balochis­tan led by Dr. Abdul Malik Baloch has com­plete­ly failed in bring­ing pos­i­tive changes to the edu­ca­tion­al land­scape of Balochis­tan. Just like schools, there are also a lot of unfilled vacan­cies in the col­leges in Balochis­tan. At the begin­ning of this year, the Balochis­tan gov­ern­ment adver­tised 674 posi­tions of lec­tur­ers on the dis­trict quo­ta basis. This was fol­lowed by polit­i­cal con­tro­ver­sies on eth­nic basis and Dr. Malikhad to can­cel the recruit­ment on these vacan­cies due to pres­sure from its main coali­tion part­ner. Apart from that, 250 vacan­cies in tech­ni­cal edu­ca­tion which were in the last stages of recruit­ment were can­celled at the last moment due to pet­ty pol­i­tics. On the oth­er hand, rul­ing coali­tion in Balochis­tan has not failed to miss a sin­gle oppor­tu­ni­ty to appoint their men at impor­tant posi­tions. Take for exam­ple, 20th of May was the last date for sub­mit­ting appli­ca­tions for the posi­tion of Prin­ci­ple of Uni­ver­si­ty Law Col­lege. Over effi­cient min­is­ters in gov­ern­ment appoint­ed their own man on the 10th of May. One of the cab­i­net mem­bers appoint­ed his daugh­ter a lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Balochis­tan bypass­ing all estab­lished rules. These are just a few exam­ples of the seri­ous­ness of the present gov­ern­ment in solv­ing the edu­ca­tion­al cri­sis in the province.

More­over, polit­i­cal patron­age of teach­ing staff along with the lack of vig­i­lance is also a main prob­lem. Many teach­ers don’t go to the schools and col­lect their salaries while rest­ing at home. The exact num­ber of such teach­ers is not known, but one can safe­ly say that they make a sig­nif­i­cant chunk of the entire teach­ing staff. The edu­ca­tion­al inspec­tors who are sup­posed to make unan­nounced vis­its to check the atten­dance of teach­ers, either take bribes or don’t both­er to trav­el to schools which are far away from dis­trict head­quar­ters. Some teach­ers and head­mas­ters, owing to their con­nec­tions with gov­ern­ment min­is­ters and mem­bers of provin­cial assem­blies, do not care to per­form their duties. Even the top most offi­cials of edu­ca­tion depart­ment can­not dare to take action against such crooked teach­ers. The incum­bent gov­ern­ment has yet to take any con­crete mea­sure to ensure that all teach­ers per­form their duties. It has also not suc­ceed­ed in effec­tive­ly instruct­ing mem­bers of the provin­cial assem­bly to stop patron­iz­ing the cor­rupt teach­ers.

Since May of this year, girls’ edu­ca­tion has been fac­ing a chal­lenge yet to be addressed by the gov­ern­ment. In Pan­jgur dis­trict of Balochis­tan, an unknown extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion called Tanzeem-ul-Isla­mi-ul-Furqan­has threat­ened all girls’ insti­tutes to either shut down or face con­se­quences. After a few days, the extrem­ist orga­ni­za­tion attacked the vehi­cle car­ry­ing staff of a co-edu­ca­tion­al insti­tute. This led to the clo­sure of all pri­vate and girls’ schools in Pan­jgur dis­trict, which are closed till to date. Tanzeem-ul-Isla­mi-ul-Furqan has been right­ly dubbed as Boko Haram of Balochis­tan. Pan­jgur dis­trict is adja­cent to Kech dis­trict, which is also the home­town of Chief Min­is­ter Dr. Abdul Malik. He has only giv­en polit­i­cal state­ments and failed to take action to pro­vide secu­ri­ty to the schools so that they can resume impart­ing edu­ca­tion. If a chief min­is­ter can­not solve a grave cri­sis close to his home­town, then it would be unwise to expect from him any res­o­lu­tion of big­ger edu­ca­tion­al prob­lems all over Balochis­tan.

Accord­ing to the bud­get, the government’s focus is towards con­struc­tion of sev­er­al new edu­ca­tion­al insti­tutes. The rea­son is obvi­ous because con­struc­tion projects are always lucra­tive for politi­cians due to the pos­si­bil­i­ty of huge kick­backs. Rather than look­ing for oppor­tu­ni­ties to earn some com­mis­sion, gov­ern­ment offi­cials should take prac­ti­cal and con­crete steps to ini­ti­ate the process of solv­ing exist­ing edu­ca­tion prob­lems because these prob­lems can­not be solved overnight. First­ly, the gov­ern­ment should ensure that edu­ca­tion­al inspec­tors are effec­tive­ly car­ry­ing out their job and inspect­ing every school in the province. Sec­ond­ly, all gov­ern­ment mem­bers of provin­cial assem­bly should imme­di­ate­ly cease patron­age of cor­rupt edu­ca­tion­al staff and oth­er offi­cials. Third­ly, the gov­ern­ment should make recruit­ment on 7,300 vacan­cies in the edu­ca­tion­al sec­tor. This can only be done if estab­lish­ment of some less impor­tant new­ly pro­posed insti­tutes is post­poned for the time being. Last­ly, com­plete­ly elim­i­nat­ing favoritism, nepo­tism and eth­nic bias and then for­mu­lat­ing a long term edu­ca­tion­al pol­i­cy for the province. All these steps require strong polit­i­cal will which cur­rent gov­ern­ment has failed to man­i­fest so far.