PESHAWAR, Sept 17: Begum Raana Liaquat Ali Khan, wife of first Prime Minister of the country Liaquat Ali Khan, died in 1990 but she inaugurated an office in 1994, according to the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Textbook Board textbooks taught to the grade 6 students in public and private sector schools in the province.
This revelation was made by Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl MPA Shah Hussain Khan in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on Tuesday through a call attention notice.
The MPA said there were serious spelling and factual mistakes in textbooks which had been taught to hundreds of thousands students of different grades in schools for the last two to three years.
Giving some examples of erroneous textbooks of different levels, he said Pakistan-Japan Friendship Tunnel in Kohat had been mentioned as Pakistan-China Friendship Tunnel in Urdu textbook for grade 7 students, while in table section, ‘10x2 = 40’, was another serious error in Mathematics textbooks for grade 2.
Mr Shah Hussain said there were glaring errors of orthography in other textbooks including social study and science.
He said the flawed textbooks in question were distributed free of charge to students in the government schools but the board and the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education didn’t remove flaws.
The Department for International Development (DFID) of United Kingdom had provided over Rs30 billion to the provincial government for reforms in education sector, including free distribution of teaching material, among the students of government schools in the province.
These textbooks are also taught in the government schools in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata).
During the session, Minister for Elementary and Secondary Education Mohammad Atif said millions of textbooks had been distributed to students.
He said the department had set up a review committee to remove errors and mistakes from textbooks.
The minister said five of the seven subject specialist posts in the board had been lying vacant but the vacancies were being filled.
During the question and answer hour, Awami National Party MPA Jafar Shah accused the University of Swat vice chancellor of violating rules and regulations in the appointment of teachers and other employees.
He said the vice chancellor appointed teachers and other staff on daily wages and they were later regularised in violation of the rules.
Mr Jafar said only the chancellor could regularise employees according to the university act.
Through a supplementary question, Minister for Works and Services Department Yousaf Ayub said 90 per cent of the University of Haripur employees had been appointed against merit and in many cases, seven to nine members of a single family had been appointed.
He demanded inquiry into these appointments.
Adviser on Higher Education Mushtaq Ghani said scrutiny had been ordered in the appointments to universities, which were asked to send in the record and details of all employees.
He assured the House that the government would uphold merit in the appointments to the education sector.
Interestingly, various questions were referred to the relevant standing committees, which do not exist.
The speaker has yet to notify the formation of these committees and name their members.
The House passed ‘The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Provincial Ombudsman (Amendment) Act, 2013’ with certain amendments curtailing powers of the ombudsman in the appointment of staff of his secretariat.
An amendment tabled by MPA Shah Hussain Khan was also included in the bill.
The House also formed a select committee to thrash out the Right to Information Bill, which was tabled in the assembly on Monday.
Members of the committee include Syed Jafar Shah, Amina Sardar, Shah Hussain Khan, Arbab Akbar Hayat, Ziaullah Bangash, Sameeullah Alizai, Qurban Ali and Mohammad Ali.
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