Lahore - Life Desk -A wholesale fraud is going on with the aspirant EDUCATORS right under the nose of the caretakers of the mighty Punjab, where the government claims to be waging ‘war’ against corruption.
“Tentative Merit List of Educators” for the year of 2014 for Female candidates was shyly displayed at Punjab Government Comprehensive Girls High School Wahadat Road Lahore yesterday (Friday).
DEO office did not announce or inform the candidates, through any means, when these (de)merit lists were to be displayed, leaving majority of candidates surprised.
Candidates have been given just 2 days (April 4 and 5) to view, review and register any complaints. Those selected also have to sign their willingness for joining by today, or, a handy way to ensure that the deserving candidates are filtered out. The same techniques were adopted when pre-interview merit lists were displayed, and many deserving candidates, who qualified the merit, did not even know about it and hence were cast away. These lists were not even displayed on Punjab educator website, which have been specifically made for ‘fair selection’ by the ‘laptop government’ that claims of bringing IT revolution in the province.
Now the lists for a mega city like Lahore have been displayed at a single point. And it being a “girls school” fathers and brothers of many girls, who somehow learnt about the lists and reached to see the names, were told to keep out of the premises for they are MALES. Interestingly, the staff (mis)handling the process inside are all males. They can’t get in, even after school time, to see the lists, which have been purposely scattered around the place here and far there so that even those girls who fortunately reached the place may not discover their name.
But that’s not all. The fraud is much larger in scale, so much so that even the lists have been thoroughly doctored. Many girls who were at top positions in the pre-interview merit lists, their names in the final merit lists have been replaced with some new names – that were not present in the pre-interview lists at all.
To cap it all, even the number of seats for different tehsils/towns as originally published in the advertisement (dated 20-1-2014) for the posts, have been changed. For example there was 1 seat for tehsil Shalimar, but now 2 candidates have been selected for that area. There were 2 seats for tehsil Model Town, but now that 2 seats have simply vanished.
Atia Sadiq, a candidate who topped the pre-interview list for Senior Elementary School Educator (Drawing), were told that her name was not there in the final merit list. When she showed the staff her name at the top in the pre-interview list, she was told by that there might have been a “computer error” and she could file a complaint for correction. But then she was told that there were no seats for her area (tehsil Model Town). To confuse her even more, the concerned official – who refused to give his name and designation – told her that her area (Johar Town) fell in tehsil Raiwind and not in tehsil Model Town. The disappointed and disheartened topper went home as she could do nothing to secure her right.
Another girl, who faced the same situation, refused to give her name saying that she had “talked to some inside officials” who promised her to “fix the problem” for an amount she would not reveal.
If all this is happening in capital, the scale of corruption in education department in rest of the province is simply unimaginable. Is there anyone who cares?