The Express Tribune Editorial 5 December 2019

Mera Bacha Alert

In what is aimed at stopping increasing incidents of child abduction and abuse, the government in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa has recently launched the ‘Mera Bacha Alert’, a mobile application that will allow prompt and confidential reporting of a missing child and instantly provide details of the disappearance to senior police officials. Child abuse is, unfortunately, a common occurrence in our country, with reported child abuse cases increasing by 11 per cent in 2018 as compared to the figure in 2017. Although the app is significant in that it will encourage parents to immediately report missing children who may not otherwise do so due to social stigma and other reasons, it is important to remember that it does not diminish the importance of police reforms as, once a child is reported missing, it is the police who are responsible for recovering them.

Punjab Chief Minister Usman Buzdar’s comments are telling in that regard. Speaking recently on the kidnappings of four children in Kasur’s Chunian tehsil, he termed them a result of police negligence and emphasised the need to urgently fix ‘police incompetence’, adding that the tragedy could have been prevented had the police initiated a timely investigation. Child protection experts have also blamed the rise in such incidents on a wider culture of apathy among law enforcers. A prominent child rights NGO has also lamented as ‘shocking’ the laxity of both the government and the police in cases of child sexual abuse. In addition, a Sindh High Court bench has also recently bemoaned police performance in missing children cases, calling it “zero”. There is also the matter of police corruption. The well-regarded US Secretary of State’s Report on Trafficking in Persons speaks of our police’s complicity with criminals, saying that, when poor girls go missing, their families lack the finances for their rescue.

Unless police reforms are implemented in these areas, the ‘Mera Bacha Alert’ app is unlikely to make much difference.

Areas of darkness

We have been experiencing power failure for so many years that the two words have become an integral part of our daily vocabulary. According to a report in this newspaper, there are more than 8,000 villages in Punjab which have never been provided with electricity albeit a plethora of promises. In light of the long-persisting shortage of electricity, the International Renewable Energy Agency (IREA) has suggested that Pakistan prioritise the renewable energy resources to overcome its crippling power crisis. However, still 50 million Pakistanis have no access to grid electricity due to the unavailability of a sufficient amount of power and lack of proper infrastructure. The IREA has ranked the country 115th among 137 economies for reliable power.

The report prepared by the energy department has revealed that a present 1,286 villages in Bahawalpur and 6,500 villages in Lahore are without electricity. The report says the Rural Electrification Programme costing billions has failed to provide electricity to a large number of villages. Around 325,000 households in Punjab currently lack access to electricity. Even in Mianwali, home of PM Imran Khan, known otherwise as a philanthropist, many households have no access to electricity.

Officials say they plan to install solar panels in these areas at a cost of Rs35 billion. The provincial government is working to obtain soft loans from the ADB to finance the project. We hope the plan translates into reality soon, and those used to living in the dark ages are not scared of light after they see the power bills like those living in urban areas. We look forward to the day which Edison envisioned: “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.” The dictum should not be lost sight of: Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.

Public education system

If recent results are anything to go by, the public education system remains in a state of disarray. Only 174 of the nearly 16,000 students from Sindh who achieved A-One grades in this year’s matriculation-level science examinations studied at public-sector schools. Similarly, just about 37 per cent of students belonging to Sindh government schools were able to pass the entrance examination for NED University of Engineering and Technology. While the bad results are not hugely different from those in the previous years, their significance is in fact that the government continues to try to overregulate private schools instead of competing with them on quality grounds.

Public schools continue to suffer from obsolete teaching materials and lack of facilities, yet the Sindh government has done little to invest in improving the situation. Among the biggest problems is the fact that provincial authorities are expected to spend in excess of Rs200 million on training teachers, much of which is coming from foreign donor agencies. Yet the Sindh government’s training bodies do not even have staff with the requisite qualifications necessary to provide vocational training to teachers. There is also no follow-up assessment mechanism to judge whether or not the teachers’ skills were improved through the training programmes. If this remains the case, everyone along the training chain will make money off the exercise, and nobody will be accountable, because there would be no way to maintain checks and balances. Or is that what the intention was all along?

Among the other options that should be on the table are better salaries for teachers, which would presumptively lead to bigger and more skilled applicant pools. Another is a reformation of the posting system to encourage good teachers to work in rural locations because even altruism has its limits. Right now, even competent teachers who hail from backward areas often refuse to go back to those areas because the pay is significantly lower.
But these measures would require setting aside additional funds for salaries rather than spending them on flashy gadgets or things with ribbons for cutting, and no politician seems to want that.