RECORDER REPORT

PESHAWAR: Chief Minister Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Pervez Khattak has directed the Communication and Works (C&W) Department to initiate the construction work for improvement of deteriorated buildings of 200 government schools within two months.

He directed the education department to devise a comprehensive mechanism for providing necessary facilities to all public sector schools on permanent and sustainable basis.

Directing the education department to identify all missing facilities in the government schools, the Chief Minister made it clear that provision of such facilities would now be responsibility of the forthcoming district governments and they would have to spend at least 20 percent of the development fund for these facilities.

The Chief Minister issued these directives while presiding over a meeting here Wednesday regarding improvement of government schools’ buildings. The meeting was also attended by the provincial Education Minister Muhammad Atif Khan, Finance Minister, Muzaffar Said Advocate, Chief Secretary, Amjad Ali Khan, Additional Chief Secretary, Hamad Awais Agha, secretaries of Education, and C&W departments and other concerned officers.

The meeting was told that the dilapidated buildings of 200 schools would be rehabilitated throughout the province and out of them rehabilitation work on 70 schools would be started soon.

On this occasion, Provincial Minister for Education, Atif Khan informed that buildings of more 202 schools would also be rehabilitated by the year 2017 with financial assistance of DFID. Out of them 35 schools will be completed by April next year, he added.

Chief Minister Pervez Khattak asked the education department to comprehensively identify the missing facilities of the provincial government’s schools and said that in future it would be responsibility of the district governments to ensure provision of these facilities. He said that for these facilities it would be mandatory for the district governments to allocate 20 percent of the development funds that they would receive from the provincial government every year.