Lawmaker's many hats
We have known ruling party lawmakers to be wielding power in various capacities. They have a mandated advisory role in the upazila parishad and have a say in the district councils as well. An add-on is their chairmanship of school managing committees.
In the latter role, the Awami League legislator from Jhenidah-4 constituency appears to be a record breaker. He is reportedly chairing managing committees at seven educational institutions in his area. Clearly, he has bitten more than he could chew.
More seriously, this is a violation of government rules. Although the rules themselves appear rather liberal as they allow for an MP to hold chairman's post in a maximum of four educational institutions, overshooting that threshold is patently unacceptable. In principle, professional people should be heading the school, madrasha and college managing committees.
The fundamental argument against preponderant role of ruling party MPs in management of educational institutions is two-fold. In recruitment of teachers they are alleged to have a partisan bias at the cost of merit and competence of the teachers taken in. In extreme cases, individuals have been put on the pay-roll but who wouldn't even care to visit a school except at the time of doling. In the process, quality of education takes the worst kind of hit; no wonder the dropout is 21 percent at the primary level.
Secondly, allocations to the education sector, though far from the ideal level, are on the rise. Substantial amounts of money flow down the funnel. Vested interests develop around the MPO (monthly payment order), that numerous schools are covered by, with them scrambling to get a finger in the pie. Little wonder, according to TIB studies, education sector, particularly the primary segment ranks high on the corruption index.
Our hope is that the education ministry which has achieved a measure of success in various of aspects of primary and secondary education will not be found wanting in getting to the bottom of the Jhenidah incident. If necessary policy adjustments would have to be made to determine composition of the management committees and reformulate their terms of reference.
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