Daily Times

KARACHI: Pasban-e-Pakistan President Altaf Shakoor on Saturday, congratulating the new entrants of medical colleges, their parents and apex judiciary, has demanded to end the role of corruption mafia in education sector for good.

In a statement, he said the Supreme Court of Pakistan upheld the decision of the Sindh High Court to allow admissions in medical colleges of the meritorious students who had passed the NTS entry test.

He said this is uphold of justice, merit and equity and we salute the judiciary for doling out justice to the deserving candidates. He said logically the next action should be taken against the owners of private medical colleges that mint money from parents of medical students. He said the nexus of private medical colleges, Pakistan Medical and Dental Council and the health department need to be busted in larger public interest.

He regretted that the Sindh government has not exposed the corruption mafia that had tried to get admitted their favorite candidates into the government-run medical colleges against heavy bribery. He said it is high time that the role of the corruption mafia in education sector should be ended for good.

He advised the provincial government to stop patronizing the elements that are bent to mar education sector with their corrupt practices. He said corruption mafia has extended its tentacles to every sector from selling government jobs to real estate to road contacts to sugar mills, and at least is should spare the education sector it produces future leadership to run this country.

He said inbuilt mechanisms should be introduced to end corruption in matriculation and intermediate boards so that the students passing their examinations need not to sit in any entry test.

He said the pattern of matriculation and intermediate examinations should be changed and either these exams should be conducted on digital platforms like computers, or carbon copies of answer sheets should be provided to candidates after the end of each paper to maintain transparency. He said for each subject there should be several sets of question papers so that no candidate could copy answers from the answer sheet of other candidate.

He said objective and multi-choice questions should be given in exam papers and the method of negative marking should be introduced from matriculation level. He said biometric system of attendance for teachers and students should be introduced in all high schools and colleges to improve the standard of education.

He said a large number of government teachers, lecturers and professors are running private tuition centers, which is totally illegal, and the judiciary should take a suo moto notice of these private tuition and coaching centers being run by the government employees, which is a direct challenge to writ of government.

He said the education department fully knows which coaching center is being run by which professor but it has closed its eyes toward this malpractice as it extorts heavy bribes from these centers.

He said Pasban would continue to play its due role for safeguarding the rights of citizens including students and it would continue to raise voice against injustice.

Published in Daily Times, December 24^th 2017.