Much is said and written about the endemic malfeasance of the countrys public sector; however, not only the politicians and the civil servants, but also the media and the civil society has paid little attention to the widespread extortion and malpractices prevalent in the countrys vast private sector. In fact, the common people are suffering as much from the greed and avarice of private businessmen as those of public officials. Schools and hospitals in the private sector are on the top of the list as ordinary people are compelled to turn to them because of inadequate and substandard public facilities. After expenses on the food, the middle-income people spend a substantial portion of their incomes on education and health, but no regulatory framework and mechanism exists to protect the common mans interests in these areas. Needless to say, the government schools are in dismal state and most students lack basic skills they are supposed to learn during the schooling barring some exceptional cases. The ruling elite has intentionally ignored and destroyed the public school system in order to create a huge lucrative market for itself to rake in money. Expensive so-called English-medium or grammar schools have proliferated to extort the middle class. The owners of private schools are the neo-feudals of our times. The incomes of the old-time landed gentry have no match to their earnings and the influence of education and health barons. No law or regulatory mechanism exists to regulate the fee structure, the quality of the services and salary structures of private schools which should be termed as school-shops. This is a free-for-all situation. A majority of private schools are housed in small bungalows and lack sports and recreational facilities that are essential to the development of children. No regulation exists to limit the charges and fees of these schools. No citizen board or government inspection system is in place to supervise or inspect their working. At present, the up market private schools charge a monthly fee ranging between 7,000 per month to 12,000 per month which is more than the minimum wage of a labourer or even double or treble the minimum wage in certain cases. Each year, these schools arbitrarily raise the tuition fee by 10 to 15 percent without consultation with the parents. At the time of admission, these schools charge several fees that surpass Rs 50,000 or Rs 100,000 or even more in some cases. In most cases, private schools themselves sell the syllabus books to earn huge profits on their sale. On the other side, these high-fee schools pay meagre salaries to their teachers. There is no job guarantee for the staff. In most cases, the salary of a teacher in an up-class private school is equal to the tuition fee of two students in a class with the strength of 25 to 35 students. Obviously, the lions share of the money collected from the fees goes to the owners. They hire and fire the teachers at will. The demands for a raise in the salary are discouraged, as the teachers have no unions or associations to protect their rights. The same is true for the private hospitals that have spawned in every nook and corner. The functioning of these hospitals is scandalous, to say the least. High fees of doctors, exorbitant charges for operation theatres, rooms for indoor patients and the shortage of sufficient nursing and paramedic staff are common features of these establishments what make them actually business-shops of healthcare. A large number of private hospitals are owned by senior doctors or the groups of doctors that get salaries from the government hospitals but do their practice in their private hospital-shops. These money-minded health professionals have intentionally destroyed the public healthcare system to divert the patients to their private concerns. There do exist many low-profile, honest caregivers as well, but they have become irrelevant by the obscene and unethical practices of their colleagues. The money-minded doctors insulate themselves from any action against their malpractices by bribing influential sections of the society. Quite cleverly, they provide free or cheap services to those who matter, including civil servants, politicians and media persons. Like private schools, there is no regulatory framework to streamline the affairs of private hospitals and inspect their working. The government does have laws and system to inspect the hygiene of hotel kitchens but no system exists to oversee what is happening inside the private-sector operation theatres. The nursing and paramedic staff and support staff in these private hospitals are extremely low-paid. Once one gets admitted into a hospital, it seems one has entered a den of beggars. The sweepers, maids and even paramedics and nursing staff shamelessly surround the patient and his relatives to beg tips invoking their mercy at the time of their distress. The owners encourage this system because in this way they can hire the staff at low wages. In order to maximise their profits, the businessmen employ a minimum number of medical staff for emergency requirements. In just one last year, this has led to several cases of deaths in a couple of Lahores hospitals allegedly due to the neglect of doctors or the absence of qualified staff at the time of emergency. After some initial hue and cry by the victims families, no concrete action was taken against the culprits. Following a few incidents of protests by the patients heirs on the negligence of these establishments, a number of private hospitals have allegedly employed goons to browbeat and intimidate the patients or their protesting relatives. In the absence of public facilities, Pakistani people spend every year hundreds of billion rupees to buy education and healthcare services from the private sector. The incomes of these businesses are fabulous. One can see certain school systems multiplying into hundreds of branches in the course of the last 10 to 15 years. Similarly, several small clinics have sprawled into huge hospitals. After all, they have earned huge profits to carry out expansions. The school owners and doctors can be seen living a luxurious life. They own palatial bungalows, drive luxury cars, spend their summers in Europe or America, but pay little tax. They also resist the imposition of sales tax on their businesses. No one can touch these neo-feudals of our times, as they are either well-connected with the ruling elite or are part of it. As things stand today, the private schools and hospitals enjoy immunity from accountability. Their businesses are not transparent. They have a licence to fleece the common man. It is erroneously assumed that market competition is a correcting mechanism in itself, as the ground realities and daily experiences defy this assumption. It is futile to demand from our callous ruling elite to fix these things in the public interest. The public should themselves rise to protect its interests and campaign for creating the laws and systems for transparency and accountability of the health and education businesses. The writer is a freelance columnist.