Political rewards

The national political system is based on and revolves around sharing the spoils where our political parties, after winning the election, provide government jobs to their supporters, friends and relatives as a reward for campaigning for their victory. This ‘incentive’ is aimed at ensuring long-term continuous support. It does not matter one bit if it all happens at the cost of merit. This is one of the reasons the education sector suffers. Every year, federal and provincial governments together spend about Rs1,000 billion on education in government schools, but we hardly see any progress. In fact, the literacy rate is stagnant, if not declining.
There is a general perception that we do not have funds for education, which is, in fact, a misperception. We do have money, but we do not spend it on education. Punjab in its government schools spends Rs31,000 per child annually, Sindh Rs40,000, Balochistan Rs61,000, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) Rs38,000. Where does this money go?
This goes into the pockets of political party workers, who are appointed teachers and administrators by political parties to keep them happy and satisfied so that the parties may always have a workforce ready for any task given any time for their narrow political interests.
This politics-education nexus has ruined our education at the grassroots level in the public sector. The current literacy rate in Pakistan is 63.2 per cent, which means that about 90 million people in the country cannot read and write. To improve education and improve the literacy rate in Pakistan, we need to eliminate this ‘political rewards’ system.
Haani Mustafa
Karachi