The Punjab Education Department has uncovered 1.8 million ghost students enrolled in government schools across the province.
The massive fraud has cost the provincial government an estimated Rs. 50 billion annually.
The discovery came after a comprehensive, data-driven investigation with data engineers and the National Database and Registration Authority (NADRA).
By cross-verifying school enrollment records with NADRA’s biometric and registration data, officials were able to accurately identify legitimate students and flag false entries.
Punjab Education Minister Rana Sikandar Hayat said government schools actually enroll around nine million students, but officials inflated the records to show 10.8 million.
“The budget is issued based on the teacher-student ratio. To avoid transfers, teachers exaggerated student numbers. This malpractice has been going on for years,” Hayat stated.
The manipulation didn’t just affect a few areas. Schools across multiple districts registered over 40,000 fake students, with Faisalabad, Lahore, Gujranwala, Rahim Yar Khan, Rawalpindi, and Bahawalpur reporting the highest numbers.
The fraudulent enrollments led to the unnecessary disbursement of funds—an estimated Rs. 4 billion per month in non-salary expenditures—and resulted in unjustified teacher allocations.
The investigation also found that schools assigned 47,000 surplus teachers based on the falsified student numbers.
The education minister confirmed that the department will now reallocate these teachers to schools facing staff shortages and will not hire new teachers in the near future.
The use of NADRA’s biometric and registration data was instrumental in the cleanup process. By matching school records with national identity data, the Education Department was able to eliminate ghost entries.
Meanwhile, the Punjab government has pledged to continue its efforts to improve transparency and accountability in the education sector; furthermore, officials expect to introduce additional reforms in the coming months.
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