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A teacher`s tale...is anyone listening?

2015-05-18
SIALKOT: The plight of the teachers and the taught at the rural area schools exposes the official claims about education reforms and facilities.

Gulshan Salomi is one such teacher who had recently been appointed in grade 9 at Bajwat`s Govt Girls Primary School, a good 75 kilometres away from her Rasulpur Bhalliyaan village.

Ms Salomi faces a great deal of difficulty in reaching school in time. Besides transportation woes, the institution she wants to devote her life for denies her even the most basic facilities. The school lacks a classroom, furniture, lights, drinking water, toilet and boundary wall and is known among locals as a `ghost school`.

She is one of the two teachers posted here to teach just three students. She talces class on muddy ground and some villagers have given a `charpoy` for the students and teacher to sit on.

Her family says the education department is making a mockery of skilled people and demands that the authorities post her somewhere near her home. She says the department has deputed her at a far-off school, ignoring the option she had chosen. She alleges that many others have been posted at schools close to their homes though she was second on the merit list.

The academic has urged Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and other authorities to give her relief by ordering her adjustment in some other school so that she can maintain a family with a peace of mind and satisfaction.

District Monitoring Officer Amir Raza, when contacted, said he would look into the matter. ABID MEHDI