Daily Times

PESHAWAR: The overall condition of primary education in the provincial capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa is in dilapidated condition despite the tall claims of education emergency around 27 primary schools mostly girls closed for the last five years. According to the Elementary & Secondary Education Department (E& SED) KP statistic there are 27 primary schools including 20 girls and six boys are temporary closed. The schools are located in the rural areas of the Peshawar district where parents and children are waiting for the government to reopen the schools in order to restart their learning for good. The district council Peshawar allocated Rs197 million for the education sector for the Financial Years (FY) 2016-17, however half of the year of the budget has elapsed but no planning or steps has been carried out to resolve the issue of closing primary education. The previous governments had spent millions of rupees over the construction of these primary schools but the present government in the course of three years could not even manage to reopen the schools. Surprisingly, Peshawar stands second where large numbers of government primary schools mostly girls are closed due to the negligence of the district government and the education department. The spokesperson of the district Peshawar Nazim Mina Khan, told Daily Times, that Rs420 million have been received by the district council for the developmental purpose. He said that issues pertaining to education and closing primary schools would be resolved in the coming quarters of the budget. However, he pinpointed that the district council was not receiving the required budget on proper time which has made the movement of education projects slow down. The president of district Peshawar primary schools, Azizullah, told this scribe that the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government had allocated an unprecedented budget for the primary schools for missing facilities. He said that all of the closing primary schools were located in the rural areas of Peshawar including Mathera, Budhabera Mathanai, Chamkni and Urmar due to land disputes. He said that those who had given land for the schools were now demanding jobs in the school.