FDE facing shortage of schools, funds.

Byline: Kashif Abbasi

ISLAMABAD -- The Federal Directorate of Education (FDE), which looks after the affairs of 423 educational institutions in the capital, is facing a host of issues.

According to documents available with Dawn, the directorate is facing five major challenges: shortage of schools, creation of new teaching posts, regularisation of 1,600 daily-wage workers, litigation and capacity issues of staff of institutions and repair and maintenance of the school buildings.

In addition, according to the documents, FDE is also facing shortage of funds for hiring accommodations for teachers. At present, almost 5,895 employees have hired residential accommodations.

It said the FDE had demanded an annual budget of Rs2 billion for payment of rents of houses hired by its employees but it was allocated Rs971. A case for the supplementary grant of Rs1,029 million is under process.

Sources said the FDE had been facing shortage of funds, particularly for repair and maintenance of the educational institutions.

The repair and maintenance of school and college buildings is the responsibly of Public Works Department (PWD) but due to shortage of funds it has not undertaken the repair work for many years resulting in the deterioration of the buildings.

The sources said there was also a need for establishment of new schools to meet the obligation of providing free and compulsory education to all children aged 5-16 under Article 25-A of the Constitution.

There is also a need for creation of 2,330 new posts in teaching and 1,700 in non-teaching cadres as per study carried out by the MS wing of the FDE in 2013-14.

The issue of 1,600 daily-wage teaching and no-teaching staff working in FDE-run institutions has been lingering for around a decade.

When contacted, Joint Secretary Ministry of Education Syed Umair Javed, who is also holding the acting charge of the FDE...