Pakistan’s Supreme Court responded to the plague of “ghost schools” affecting the country by ordering district judges to survey schools and report on their status. Throughout the country, school buildings remain empty of students and instead serve as housing, barns or offices for police, paramilitary and other officials. Although students have no access to education in these areas, teachers still receive salaries from the government.
“The government has failed to provide any answer or details about the state of ghost and non-functional schools, while apparently funds and salaries were being disbursed as buildings remain abandoned or occupied by animals…There are animals kept in schools and the buildings have been turned into stables. This is what we are doing to our children when education is a constitutional right,” Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry said.
This recent state-wide investigation came in response to a petition from Rehmat Ullah of the Sindh Rural Development Society. The charity’s leader asked the Supreme Court to investigate “ghost schools” which plague largely affect rural areas like Sindh province, keeping large numbers of children out of school. Estimates predict that hundreds of thousands of government schools country-wide remain unused while approximately 25,000 “ghost teachers” continue to receive pay.
Iqual Gabol, a father of three children without access to education on the outskirts of Karachi, spoke out stating “not a single teacher has been appointed here since the school was built in 2005. There’s no electricity. The building is of no use. We’ve requested many times to the chief minister, the education minister, even the president to make it functional, but nothing has happened”
“Ghost schools” are symptomatic of the larger problem of Pakistan’s ongoing educational crisis. As a result of inadequate funding and widespread corruption, nearly one-half of the country’s primary school aged children and three-quarters of all girls remain out of school.
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Written by Amanda Lubit