Ten-year-old Fatima is a 4th grade student at the Government Primary School Sangharwala on the outskirts of Multan. She was enrolled in the school in 2017 when there was extreme electricity loadshedding in the country. Fatima has had an eyesight problem since her birth and she has to wear glasses. She has a hard time in class as she can’t see anything on the blackboard during outages.

There was a relief on the installation of the solar panels in the school but the situation has reverted after they were stolen. The Punjab government had planned to transfer 15,000 schools as well as primary health centres of the province to solar energy and named it as “Punjab Solarisation Programme”. The cost of this project was estimated to be Rs250bn.

In 2018, the provincial energy department started installing solar panels in the public schools.

Mrs Abida, who has been the headmistress of Fatima’s school for six years, says 86 students are enrolled in the school that has two classrooms and one restroom for the staff consisting of four teachers.

Four solar panels installed on the roof in February 2019 were responsible for operating fans and lights.

Abida says that unidentified people had stolen the solar panels worth Rs300,000 from the rooftop on April 16.

Faiz Abbas, the chief education officer of the education department, was informed about the situation and he registered an FIR with Seetal Mari Police Station. However, the panels have not yet been recovered nor has the investigation made any progress.

Under the solarisation programme, 2,741 primary schools in the Multan division were shifted to solar energy, out of which either solar panels or the entire solar system are missing in 1,328 schools.

Eight-year-old Abdullah studies at the Government Primary School, Karpalpur, Qadirpur Ran. He has respiratory problems and wishes to become a doctor to treat respiratory patients.

It becomes hard for him to breathe due to humidity in summers. Moreover, it is difficult for him to sit and even breathe in the classroom because of suffocation due to loadshedding.

Muhammad Shahid, the headmaster of the Govt Primary School Karpalpur, says the school has 147 students, four classrooms, one staff room and four teachers. Four solar panels, a converter and two solar fans were installed in the school in the last week of January 2019.

“The solar system saved us from worrying about loadshedding and bills. But last year on March 11, thieves stole four solar plates, converters, fans and water pumps worth at least Rs225,000.

He says an FIR of theft was registered with Qadirpur Ran Police Station and he has contacted the police station several times for recovery of panels but in vain.

Multan Chief Education Officer Faiz Abbas tells Lok Sujag that only 589 FIRs were registered about the theft incidents from 1,328 schools of the Multan division and headmasters of the schools were held answerable. He adds that a departmental committee was also formed in the case of the robbery of solar panels and other equipment. Assistant Director Abdul Jabbar headed the committee and he has sent his recommendations to the Education Department.

The committee report states that the targeted schools do not have the watchman post, which led to the robberies. According to the report, the police have not made any progress regarding the recovery of the stolen goods worth hundreds of thousands of rupees. Thus, the solar project has practically failed and the schools are back in the dark.

According to the government documents and education department records, solar systems were installed in 637 schools in Khanewal, out of which 210 schools face the theft issue. However, only 149 cases were registered while show-cause notices were issued to the headmasters of 61 schools and they were instructed to register cases.

Solar panels in 191 out of 721 schools in the Multan district were robbed and all these cases were reported. Whereas in Lodhran, 534 government schools had solar panels installed out of which 92 were robbed and 91 FIRs were registered.

In district Vihari, 835 schools were robbed of solar panels out of the 849 schools which had solar energy whereas 158 cases were registered while notices were issued to 681 headmasters.

Fayyaz Baloch, the spokesperson for the city police officer Multan, says the police stations concerned take action on a case registration and the police have also conducted raids in different areas to recover the stolen panels. He claims that although the panels recovery percentage is low, the police have not given up. In these cases, two suspects were arrested from whom solar plates were retrieved besides other goods worth Rs4.5m. The remaining culprits will also be arrested soon.