Chief Justice of Pakistan (CJP) Gulzar Ahmed said on Tuesday that the government’s negligence has turned education into a business.
He made these remarks while hearing a case pertaining to incomplete projects under Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority (ERRA).
“The college fee, a few years ago, was just Rs. 800. Today, the school fee for toddlers is not less than Rs. 30,000,” he said, adding that it was the state’s responsibility to provide free education to everyone.
Irked by the slow progress of the authority, the Chief Justice directed ERRA to complete the construction of schools destroyed in the 2005 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa earthquake by next year.
During the course of the hearing, the CJP reprimanded the ERRA Chairman, Lieutenant-General Akhtar Nawaz, and said, “Had your children been deprived of education, these projects would have been completed way back.”
To this, ERRA Chairman apprised the court that only 3,000 out of 14,000 projects were incomplete. He said that education and health had always been their priority.
“If education and health were your top priority, not even a single project would have been incomplete. Schools and hospitals in areas affected by the earthquake should have been built within a year,” Justice Gulzar Ahmed remarked.
Subsequently, the court instructed the authority to submit a detailed report on completed projects in KP along with details of its children and teachers and adjourned the hearing for a month.
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