64 schools get notices for defying fee concession, salary orders

The Directorate of Inspection & Registration of Private Institutions Sindh (Dirpis) on Monday issued show-cause notices to 64 private schools in the Karachi region for not complying with the Sindh government’s orders of providing 20 per cent concession in tuition fees and paying salaries to staff members.

On April 6, on the instructions of Education Minister Saeed Ghani, the directorate had issued a notification and made it mandatory for the administrators of all private schools and intermediate colleges to grant 20 per cent concession in tuition fees for the months of April and May.

Likewise, the private schools were also bound to pay salaries of the teaching and non-teaching staff in full and to not terminate their services during the current lockdown. These decisions were taken to provide relief to parents as well as employees in the private education sector.

Until April 11, however, the directorate had received some 834 complaints from various regions of the province. The figures issued on Monday show that 631 complaints were registered in Karachi Division, 59 in Hyder­abad, 47 in Sukkur, 33 in Shaheed Benazirabad, 29 in Mirpurkhas and 35 in Larkana.

These complaints were filed by parents, teachers and non-teaching staff members, all of whom informed Dirpis that the private school owners were not willing to comply with the provincial government’s orders.

In a statement issued to the media, Dirpis Registrar Rafia Javed said: “We have sent show-cause notices to 35 private schools for not providing 20 per cent concession in tuition fees and to 29 others for not paying salaries to their staff members.”

She said that after the verification of the lodged complaints from various sources, the directorate issued show-cause notices to those school owners who had been violating the government’s orders. If the owners fail to explain their positions within seven days, strict action will be taken against them under the Sindh Private Educational Institutions (Regulation and Control) Ordinance, 2001, Amendment Act-2003 & Rules-2005, she added.