Daily Times

LAHORE: The District Education Authority (DEA) on Saturday decided to review security arrangements at public and private educational institutions after the wave of deadly attacks by terrorists across the country.

According to a letter available with Daily Times, the authority’s assistant director has ordered district education officers of secondary and elementary education and district officers of special education to review and rectify security measures taken by educational institutions as per the standard operating procedures (SOPs) issued by the School Education Department (SED), keeping in view the current wave of terrorism in the country.

In the letter, the authorities concerned have been told to rectify the security deficiencies at all institutions and issue necessary directives to all the heads of public and privately managed schools/institutions for strictly observing the SOPs. The issuer also asked the officials to send pictorial evidence of each security measure taken at schools though email on a daily basis to avoid any untoward incident.

It is pertinent to mention here that a recent wave of terrorism has hit the country, as more than four major blasts and terrorist activities had been carried out by banned outfit Jamaat-ul-Ahrar within a week.

The terrorist attacks included blast at the Charing Cross that claimed more than 15 lives, a suicide attack at the shrine of Lal Shahbaz Qalandar in Sehwan Sharif, Sindh, and an attack on security officials in Awaran, Balochistan.

On the other hand, parents have shown dissatisfaction over the security arrangements made by public and private schools and termed educational institutions unsafe for their children.

They said that despite issuance of clear directives, several educational institutions, including schools, colleges and universities, were still lacking satisfactory security arrangements.

Talking to Daily Times, the father of a schoolboy, Rizwan, was of the view that the final examination of students had started, while terrorists were carrying out strikes across the country. He said there was a need to ensure foolproof security of educational institutions during the final examination.

He said that although the managements of schools across the city had installed security cameras on the main entrance and exit gates of the educational institutions, the cameras were not operational at several schools. He said that metal detectors were also out of order at those schools.

Nasira, 33, a mother of three, said that government departments and school managements only think about the security of schools whenever a terrorist attack is carried out, otherwise no one cared about the arrangements made by the schools, colleges and universities. She urged the government authorities to come up with a mechanism for proper security checking at educational institutions on a weekly basis, as this was the only way parents would be satisfied over security arrangements at the institutions.