Lahore THE former secretary of the Punjab Higher Education Department, Ahmad Cheema, presently serving as the Lahore district coordination officer Saturday turned up before a judicial commission probing faults into intermediate results and vehemently supported the education boards’ ex-computerisation consultant Dr. Majid Naeem.
In his statement, DCO Cheema stated that Dr Naeem was a straightforward and assiduous officer and was not responsible for the inaccuracies in the boards ofintermediate and secondary education (BISEs) results.
He said Dr Naeem’s job was only to provide a computerised system which would was to be further utilised by the employees of all the eight boards. But, he said, the employees did not cooperate with the consultant and intentionally made the project fail.
The former secretary pointed out that Dr Naeem had successfully completed two previous results as there were not even 25 percent faults in them.
He said a mafia of handful employees at the BISEs was behind the whole chaos and propaganda against the computerisation consultant. Cheema when asked by the judge maintained that the appointment of Dr Naeem was not based on political influence and he (Cheema) had nothing to do with the appointment. Later, Lahore BISE acting-chairman Allah Bukhsh Malik said, in his statement, that Cheema, being the secretary higher education department was the hiring authority of Dr Naeem and they both were responsible for the turmoil.
He further said that the board administration and employees fully cooperated with Dr Naeem and struggled to make the computerised system successful but there were too many flaws in the system/software.
The judge asked him whether the board officials had brought the matter into the notice of the authorities. He replied that the authorities were informed verbally, however, no written complaint was lodged.
At this the judge remarked, “Your minor mistake played havoc with the future of innocent students.”
Malik regretted and admitted that he had committed a great mistake by not lodginga complaint in writing and in time. He was asked to file his written reply on the next hearing.
Boards’ suspended chairman Akram Kashmiri also spoke before the commission and said he was illegally suspended as he had no role in the matter. He said the system was enforced through incompetent persons who could not handle the matter.
He said computerised system was better but the software introduced by Dr Naeem was defective. He said he had been verbally conveying his reservations to the authorities concerned but to no avail.
Aslam Gujjar, president of BISE Employees Union, told the commission that he had been pointing out the faults but he was always shown the door for pointing out the faults in system supervised by Dr Naeem.
He also presented result card of a student, Shehzad Ahmed s/o Akhtar Gull, where he was shown failed but later proved that he passed the exam by securing 454 marks. Shehzad had committed suicide as he came to know about his failure. He also presented a copy of a circular issued by the HEC which said that those hindering the process of computerisation of the system would be penalised under the rules.
Some other officials of the BISE Lahore also informed the commission that Dr Naeem was given the task because of Ahad Cheema who had been giving him (Dr Naeem) undue favours throughout the tenure.
BISE Controller Examination Anwar Farooq told the commission that the result of 80,000 students was found erroneous out of total 124,653 students. He said there were 21,770 mistakes in total of 764,922 subjective papers. There were 143,934 mistakes in compilation of results of total 629,895 objective papers. He held Dr Naeem and his hiring authority responsible for the matter.
Majid Naeem, appearing before the commission, said that he had not taken a penny for providing his services. He had been paying hundreds of thousands of rupees to make the program successful. At this, Justice Shahid asked his NTN and asked about his tax paying details. Replying the question, Naeem said he paid nothing this year as he had no income.The news.
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