A special inspection squad deputed on the orders of Punjab Education Minister Rana Sikandar Hayat has discovered manipulation in official record related to school enrolment.
The squad led by School Education Secretary Khalid Nazir Wattoo and Education Task Force Chairman Mazammil Mehmood has been making unannounced visits across districts to verify the factual position on the ground.
In Okara, the district education authority chief executive officer (CEO) was found to have submitted fabricated data of enrollment and missing facilities. He was publicly reprimanded and given 48 hours to submit the correct information.
Similar patterns have been detected several other districts.
However, the CEOs in Sahiwal and Pakpattan made visible efforts to improve infrastructure.
“Misreporting and incomplete data are not clerical mistakes, they are deliberate cover-up,” Secretary Wattoo declared during an inspection. “Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz is monitoring the situation and strict action will be taken against any authority caught lying,” he added.
According to sources, investigations had exposed 1.8 million ‘ghost students’ on Punjab’s school rolls earlier this year, an inflation of figures that drained an estimated Rs50 billion annually from the public exchequer. The actual government school student population is closer to nine million, not the 10.8 million reported in documents, the sources added.
The scandal has forced the government to reassign teachers who had been wrongly deployed on the basis of the fake figures.
Last week, the Mianwali District Education Authority CEO was dismissed for submitting false data on school facilities, while a principal serving in Sargodha was suspended after inspections revealed filth, teachers’ absence from duty and an administrative collapse.
The principals across the province have now been warned that fake enrollment record will no longer be tolerated.
Civil society groups have accused the relevant authorities of wasting resources while children study in crumbling classrooms without water, toilets or furniture. “They show students on paper, not in the classrooms,” said a parent outside a school in Sheikhupura.
In an attempt to regain control, the Punjab government has announced sweeping reforms: Rs10 billion worth of missing facilities to be delivered in 90 days, repair of nearly 600 collapsing school buildings and thousands of new classrooms within a year.
Additionally, 1.1 million out-of-school children have been enrolled under the Punjab Education Foundation’s latest campaign.
“This is not a funding crisis,” said a policy analyst. “As long as the system survives on fake numbers, the children of Punjab will continue to suffer.”
“We teachers are on roads to protect the public education system in Punjab as government policies deprive poor people of access to education and the rulers’ priority is privatisation. The fake data entry has exposed the performance of the education ministry,” said an official of the school education department.
