PESHAWAR (Staff Report) – Despite its commitment the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Government has failed to impose education emergency in the province with 26,500 schools still lacking basic facilities and Tameer-e-School Progamme was yet to materialise.
According to official data of Provincial Education Department, at present about 10,000 government schools do not have electricity, 7,500 are without drinking water, 5,000 lack boundary walls and 4,000 have no washroom.
Provincial Minister for Education Atif Khan said that some 159 schools have been closed in different parts of the province, mostly because teaching staff was not available.
The government has also virtually abandoned the much-trumpeted Tameer-e-School Programme in the province, as an effective campaign inside and outside the country for raising funds to provide basic
facilities to thousands of government schools has not been initiated.
Education minister Atif Khan recently presiding over a meeting became angry with the Education Department’s high officials over the inordinate delay.
An official of Education Department said the project was launched by Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Government to encourage affluent individuals to fund missing facilities at thousands of schools.
He said unfortunately the PTI leadership focused more on other issues instead of its priority areas including education and health.
He said that the KP government is relying almost exclusively on donors for funding its school reconstruction and rehabilitation, provision of furniture, and girls’ stipends programmes.
