Daily Times

The Rawalpindi cantonment board (RCB) employees have expressed worries about the state of their children’s education because of a dearth of basic facilities in the cantonment board schools.

According to the information available on the board’s website, the public body runs five primary schools with an enrolment of around 600 students. To make matters worse, the infrastructural and basic provisions available at these schools are abysmally poor.

An RCB official, not willing to be named, said that limited financial resources do not allow lower grade officials to send their children to private schools while the standard of education in the cantonment board schools is archaic.

There are no basic facilities available to students at these institutes, he added. wishing anonymity has said that due to the limited financial resources, lower grade officials are not able to send their children to the private schools for quality education. The education system of the cantonment board school is ancient and also having a lack of basic facilities, he added.

Our kids don’t have clean water, washrooms, tables and chairs in their schools: RCB official

The official also pointed out how the education system of the Chaklala Cantonment Board (CCB) Rawalpindi was comparatively quite better than RCB, wherein they had a Montessori school and a college for their employee’s children. All this “while our kids don’t even have clean water, washroom, table and chair facilities in their RCB schools,” he sighed.

Education was said to be a basic right of all children and thus, these employees feel compelled to send their children to private school even when they cannot afford these expenses.

When contacted, RCB Secretary Qaiser Mehmood admitted that the cantonment board schools face a serious dearth of facilities.

He added, “We are planning to establish an education city for the cantonment board employees but we (could) not succeed in getting the right place in our jurisdiction of it.”

Mehmood remarked, “We are well aware of about the problems of RCB employee and doing efforts to resolve these genuine issues.”

Published in Daily Times, February 18^th 2019.