Bakhtawar
Rahimoon is heartbroken. A few months ago, she secured 79 per cent in
her intermediate exam and took a mandatory entry test on October 22 this
year to get into a public sector medical college. After taking the
test, she was very confident she would pass. But when the result was
announced, she did not see her name on the list of 2,100 or so students
found eligible for admission to the Sindh government’s medical colleges
and universities.
Bakhtawar believes she was cheated.
Some ineligible students passed the test ahead of her, she alleges,
because they had access to the question paper and its solution sheet
beforehand. “The question paper and its answer key got leaked a day
before the test,” she says on the phone from Umerkot, a small city 308
kilometres north-east of Karachi. Her father, Abdul Khalique Rahimoon,
claims having received an offer that he, too, could get the leaked paper
for his daughter by paying 200,000 rupees. “I refused because I did not
want her to pass the test through unfair means,” he says.
There
were also reports of other irregularities. Out of the test’s 100
questions, at least 14 were either not meant to be there or were beyond
the scope of the syllabus the students had studied. In a couple of
cities, the test started later than its scheduled time. In some, proctor
arrangements were inadequate, allowing some students to use mobile
phones and cheat sheets to solve the questions. Another major complaint
was that, unlike in the past, the students were not allowed to take the
question paper back home to tally their answers with the solution sheet
that is usually uploaded online soon after the test. This, many of them
said, deprived them of the opportunity to know if they had answered the
questions correctly, and could have been a ploy to manipulate the
results.
Hundreds of students held protest rallies soon
after the test in many cities and towns across Sindh to demand that its
results be annulled. Some filed a petition at the Sindh High Court,
pleading for a retest.
To address widespread
dissatisfaction with the test, the Sindh government set up a six-member
inquiry committee headed by the special secretary of the health
department, Aijaz Ahmed Mahesar. After thorough investigation, the
committee recommended the cancellation of the result – which the
government did on November 11 – and issued a damning report about the
mismanagement and gross irregularities in how the test was conducted.
“Lapses
in the secrecy of the question paper made us recommend the result’s
cancellation,” Mahesar says in an interview. He also confirms that the
test commenced 10 minutes late in Karachi and 35 minutes late in
Hyderabad. There were also other flaws such as the inclusion of
incorrect questions, he adds.
The committee did not find
concrete evidence to prove that the question paper and its answer key
were leaked to select candidates. But, he says, these allegations could
be true given how subsidised medical education is at public sector
institutions. The entire expense for a degree in medicine is 700,000 to
800,000 rupees at government colleges and universities while the same
degree costs more than 12 million rupees at a private institution, he
says. Some parents, he says, may be tempted to spend a few hundred
thousand rupees to get access to a leaked question paper to give their
children an advantage in passing the test.
The entry
test is conducted by the National Testing Service (NTS), a private firm
based in Islamabad. Sindh started outsourcing many of its educational
entry and employee selection tests to the company in 2009, mainly on the
assumption that its system was more efficient and less prone to
irregularities and manipulations than the government’s own systems. But,
as the probe committee says in its report, the NTS does not have a
secure printing press of its own. It also does not have staff trained in
ensuring the security and secrecy of digital and printed documents. In
fact, its question papers remained with at least two people who were not
even its employees for a considerable amount of time.
“The question paper is set at a unit in Abbottabad from
where a soft copy is emailed to the in-charge of [a] printing press at
Islamabad,” the committee found out. When its members visited the press,
“it was discovered to be owned by a private individual named Zubair who
receives the question paper and its key through emails and then saves
it on his computer before deleting the documents from the server. He
also has his partner in the press, namely Rizwan, and these secret
documents in their finished and final state remain in the custody of
those two private individuals for five days, raising a big question on
the secrecy of the process, which is a paramount feature of any testing
agency.” The report identified the press as well as the Abbottabad unit
as possible sources of the leaked paper.
Even more
damaging for the NTS, a National Accountability Bureau (NAB) team raided
its headquarters in Islamabad soon after allegations of irregularities
in the entry test surfaced. NAB officials arrested some of the firm’s
employees and took many of its documents and computers with them. During
initial investigations, says a senior NAB official, it was revealed
that question paper leaks had been a routine matter at the NTS. The
other problem detected in the company’s operations pertains to its claim
that it is affiliated with the Comsats Institute of Information
Technology (CIIT). This is simply not the case. The institute has been
set up under a federal law that makes no mention of a testing service to
be run as its affiliated entity, the official adds. “We want to
investigate how a private organisation has become a major testing
service for the federal and provincial governments without fulfilling
any legal requirements.”
The NTS bosses initially denied
that a NAB team had raided their office. They held a press conference
in Islamabad on October 31 and claimed the raid was conducted by the
directorate of intelligence and investigation of the Federal Board of
Revenue (FBR) over tax-related problems. A few days later, the NTS
office was raided again — this time actually by the FBR. The company
said the raid was conducted in connection with some unresolved tax
issues and court cases. According to NTS chief executive officer, Dr
Sherzada Khan, the raiding team also “erroneously” seized a few personal
computers and some records unrelated to taxation.
A
comprehensive inquiry into the company’s affairs may open a Pandora’s
box. If it is found guilty of having mismanaged and manipulated its
testing system, then that will have a direct and major impact not only
on entrance to medical education institutions but elsewhere too.
Thousands of employees at the federal and provincial levels have been
appointed over the last five or so years after having passed the NTS
test. They may find out that their employment was not in order. The
government could face a lot of litigation if it does not sack those
employees but, at the same time, it may encounter resistance and
protests from those required to be sacked.
Some of these
legal issues have already cropped up, though on a smaller scale. The
students who cleared Sindh’s medical entry test have moved the Sindh
High Court against the cancellation of results and the court has agreed
to hear their plea. What will happen if the judges decide in their
favour?
Bakhtawar is keeping her fingers crossed.
