Daily Times

KARACHI: Although, Chief Minister Sindh Murad Ali Shah and PPP Chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari had inaugurated Manzil Pump Flyover over at the National Highway in Landhi Town, on Tuesday but the Government Elementary School Muzaffarabad Colony, located a few steps away from the same site, exposes the factual story of the so called developmental infrastructure as the school has turned into the heaps of garbage.

Ironically, a large number of nonfunctional state-schools are being used by drug addicts as getting high places also used as shield for drug dealers due to the negligence of the concerned authorities. These types of schools are mostly located in the slum areas of the metropolis in which such activities are in full swing.

“The Government Elementary School Muzaffarabad Colony was commenced by City District Government (CDGK), Karachi which was the only state-run school for the locality , but Sindh government has dissolved CDGK and formed Karachi Metropolitan Corporation (KMC) with five District Municipal Corporations (DMCs) which have no aptitude to run such schools”, Gul Muhammad Mamond, a resident of the Muzaffarabad Colony said.

He believes that people of the locality and public in general are also responsible somewhat as they’re not performing their civic duties resulting that advantageous projects of government become useless due the non-cooperation of public. “If the school was nonfunctional it might be operated again with the help of educated people of the area but the vacated building of the school is being used as garbage dumping station unfortunately and it was done by the people of locality “, he objected while shaking his head, added “we can’t blame government for everything”.

However, the boundary walls of the Government Elementary School Muzaffarabad Colony have been pulverized, wastage and trashes dumped in the centre of school’s play ground. The entrance has broken and blocked on both sides. The main building of the schools is worn-out. Encroachers and invaders have set up their huts in the premises of the schools. The building of Government Elementary School Muzaffarabad Colony doesn’t looks like a school anymore.

“There is no play ground in our area and we are come here on daily bases with other friends to play but the stink of garbage is headache for us” some children expressed their wishes, playing in the dirty play ground of the school on trampoline. “We have no school, if someone fixes the seesaw, slides, spring riders and mazes here in the ruined ground it will look beautiful and we will here come to study as well” they wished.

A decade ago this schools had become non functional because of the ethnic and political rivalries. “It was 2007, when teachers of the school stopped coming because political circumstances were not good and chaos among ANP and MQM was on the climax at that time . As a result of that Urdu Speaking teachers left the school for that time and since then the school is non functional”, Amin Khan, a social and political worker of the area said, adding that we have moved many applications to the education department of the DMC Korangi and KMC but we are not getting positive response and it seems that the school wouldn’t be functionalized in future.

It is pertinent to mention here that Sindh Minister of Education Jam Mehtab Dahar has admitted that around 2,000 schools are non functional in the province which would be functionalized with the co ordination of private sector, he stated this while presiding over a meeting in his office on Monday this week.

Published in Daily Times, June 26th, 2017.