Sindh: Monitoring system to curb illegal occupation of schools

[Naveed Yaseen]

KARACHI: The Sindh Education Department has set up a monitoring system to take action against illegal occupiers of school and college buildings in the province.

“The Sindh Education Minister has ordered the launch of an indiscriminate operation against grabbers of the education department property,” said an official letter of the department. The monitoring system of the department has been established in coordination with the Sindh Law Department.

The official letter stressed on enacting respective land grabbing laws so that illegal occupation of educational institutes can be prevented in the future.

Welcoming the move by the department, a spokesman of the Sindh Professors and Lecturers Association told Daily Times that they were also in contact with the provincial and district governments in efforts to control the practice.

“Official inquiries show that a number of influential people have turned educational buildings in Sindh into ‘autaqs’, stables and go-downs,” the spokesman told Daily Times. There are also some schools that have been unlawfully turned into police stations and immediate action is needed in order to retrieve the buildings for scholastic purposes, he said. However, officials at the Sindh Education Department said that cases of school grabbing were rare in Interior Sindh. Various school buildings in Karachi have somehow come under the power of land grabbers, they added. “Many schools including Govt Federal School in the FB Area Block-11, Govt White Hall School, Pir Colony adjacent to the Lyari Expressway and Govt Federal School in Nazimabad need to be recovered from the land mafia,” officials said. farhan zafar

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...008_pg12_4