ISALAMABAD: According to the Auditor General of Pakistan (AGP), three model colleges in the city have illegally collected Rs13.54 million in fees from their students.

IntheFederalDirectorateofEducation`s (FDE) notification number F.6.4/2005, dated 31.03.2005, it is stated that the Government of Pakistan had announced that no tuition fee will be charged by any federal government school or model college within Islamabad Capital Territory, from students of class one up till class 10, with effect from the academic sessionbeginning 2005 onwards, till further orders.

In violation of the notification issued by FDE, the three colleges collected fee from students studying in the evening shifts, according to Audit Report 2014-15.

The report also says that the three colleges, including Islamabad Model College for Boys (IMCB) I-8/3, IMCB F-7/3 and IMCG F-10/2 had collectively incurred expenses worth Rs12.6 million between 2012 and 2014.It recommends that responsibility should be fixed for this irregularity.

The report includes the explanations offered by the managements of the three colleges, who had defended the act by saying that the second shift was not being financed by the government. They told the auditor that the expenses were incurred after paying daily wage staff.

The audit team established that the fee collected from students in the eveningshift had gone towards paying salaries for the teachers that taught late classes.

The audit states that a reply from the institutions indicated that their managements had accepted the allegations and recommended that responsibility for the irregularity should be fixed.

Many model schools and colleges have been running classes in the evening because of a shortage of classrooms. Some colleges are also running evening shifts to accommodate college students who want to pay for the classes.

Last year, former state minister for Capital A dministration and Development Division (CADD) Barrister Usman Ibrahim had announced that model colleges will no longer hold evening classes and had said students in both shifts will now be studying in the mornings.

He had also promised that new classrooms will be built.

So far, nothing has been done to achievethis and FDE sources told Dawn that there were currently no projects for building new classrooms.

An FDE official said: `The minister has announced that new classrooms will be built, but because of a shortage of funds, both the FDE and CADD could not start work on the project.

He added that there was no mention of such a project for the budget on the fiscal year 2015-16.

`It is simple: evening shifts cannot be ended till new classrooms are built,` he said.

Model Colleges Director Dr Tariq Masood said that af ter the implementation of the `Right to Free and Compulsory Education, 2012`, all model colleges had stopped charging fee from their students.

However, he said, evening shift students at the colleges were still paying a fee because the staff, mostly daily wagers, have to be paid. Kashif Abbasi