Some Ramblings .....Feburary 2, 2006

Teachers from Neighbouring Villages


Sindh is full of contrasts and contradictions which seem to defy its qualities of diversity.
Primary or Higher education suffers from sheer neglect from every corner. The most
important reason is the inability of the Society to develop a sense of ownership. A government
school, hospital, road or a bridge is some alien property which should only be taken care of bythe officials and citizens job is to just be inert and apathetic as if their taxes did not go into builiding of these basic and bare necessities of life. I found many well educated and retired professors/teachers completely devoid of this sense of Ownership. In brief our much less educated parents had more sense of importance of education, community and society than todays more educated individuals in villages or towns. There was more cleanliness in homes and villages in those good old days. Teachers and other professionals were highly respected then.


School with furniture no building.


School with Building but no teacher and no furniture.




Last year, Ghulam Ali Pasha the Education Secretary Sindh came to Belleville to see his friend Dr. Anwar Bhutto. He had come to the USA to attend some meeting in Washington D.C. and Dr. Bhutto was kind enough to introduce him to us. We had pretty long discussions on the state of Education. It was during those discussions that I requested special attention to the schools in our area since " Charity begins at home". He promised and my trip to Sindh provided me an oppertunity to hold meetings with teachers and villagers. All types of schools of schools were
discussed. Some schools had no teachers, if they had teachers there was no furniture or building.
If there was building than there was no furniture or teacher. I called the Sindh Education Secretary on phone for an appointment and he was kind enough to advise me to bring some representatives of the villagers along with me as he was going to call the relevant educational authorities on local as well as provincial level. Sure enough when we went to see him in Karachi
he was well prepared with his section officers and planning authorities including the District Education Officer. We discussed about 15 schools in Kandiaro, Bhiria and Mehrabpur Talukas.
He made necessary decisions and gave orders for repairs and buildings for Schools and upgrading of Primary schools to middle schools. One non-functioal Boys Primary School was
converted to Girls School.

On a follow up, villagers tell me that they have seen some movement to implement the decisions taken by the Sindh Education Secretary. Hopefully more will be done in the near future and as soon as something significant happens we will be reporting to you on this blog