Friday, December 24, 2010

Education in FATA

While the FATA especially North Waziristan is in hot/burning news these days and our rulers in Islamabad have immense pressure on their selves there is no one or trivial number of people have time to address the actual problems of tribal people.
Today i would like one of very basic problems for to contribute to some extent in the efforts for uplifting the core problems of this area and people.

Educational facilities/institutions:
The worst you can see in FATA is nothing but the miserable condition of public sector educational institutions especially on primary and secondary level.
Educational institutes supposed for imparting primary level of education say Montessori or kindergarten schooling are given to Maliks (The tribal elder and Political spies for their respective tribes) who use the building as their well built guest houses plus construction contract and class four positions are their other gifts and the worst scenario is that the teachers appointed for services in their school also enjoy luxuries with the consent of tribal elders.
The children of these so-called leaders enjoys the special political agent scholarships for studies in the settle areas and consequently they are always "Loyal tribal elders".
I was stunned to know that the education department in respective tribal agency observe sub divisional quota for appointment of teachers in the schools of tribal districts ignoring all the standards of merits.
Second thing that the authority for education in FATA have become salary and furniture distributor and the influential tribal elders have made them nearly zero in respect of executing their administrative powers.
What makes the situation worst is that, that political set up have very less interest in education as they more concerned about maintaining the status cue as compared to works that can actually bring change in FATA.
Many among Pakistanis/international community may not know the fact that there is no professional educational institute(College for Medicine or Engineering/business) in the Tribal areas of Pakistan but instead the students of tribal areas are given seats in colleges/universities of Pakistan for acquiring higher education (pathetically many students miss their seasons when their respective quota is filled).
On top of that tribal students who get their professional/higher educational credentials migrates to the settle districts of Pakistan hence nullifies the supposed/planned impact to their tribes (only those get education in medicine opts for return as they have better profitability market their), but , why would they return to their tribe when there is no/zero use of their education.
The question arises here is how can these tribal people be uplifted and can be made equal and equivalent part of the urban/settled areas of Pakistan?
One among the solutions is to have Affective Network of Educational institutes, the Educations office must 100% free from the administrative/political agent influences.

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