Students in danger of missing an academic year

Government must relocate IDPs before the end of October: EDO education.

HYDERABAD: As many as 16,988 students from 74 government schools and colleges in Hyderabad are likely to miss out on their current academic year if IDPs are not asked to vacate the educational institutions currently acting as shelters for flood survivors.

Furthermore, a majority of private schools have also turned down the district education department’s request to be allowed to run classes in these schools for the students of government schools in the evenings, Hyderabad education Executive District Officer (EDO) Niaz Ahmed Laghari said on Friday. If the government does not take prompt action to relocate the 16,211 IDPs living in schools, an entire academic year will go to waste, he warned, adding, “We cannot prevent the academic year from being wasted if the occupied schools are not emptied within the month of October.”

“Educational institutes were turned into relief camps during the summer vacations,” he said, adding that the occupation had “prolonged to an unbearable extent”. “

IDPs heading home

The first caravan of 942 IDPs was seen off by the Hyderabad District Relief Committee chairman, MNA Syed Ameer Ali Shah Jamote, Sindh Special Education Minister Syed Ali Nawaz Shah Rizvi and Hyderabad District Administrator Aftab Ahmed Khatri on Friday.

The IDPs were also provided with free transport facilities and rations for one week. More than 60,000 IDPs were living in relief camps in Hyderabad, while the 40,000 IDPs who chose to live with their families or in rented houses in the district were also provided with ration and medical facilities by the district government, said Jamote. Meanwhile, IDPs whose homes are still flooded will continue to be provided with facilities at relief camps, said the MNA, who added that “Not a single IDP will be forced to leave relief camps”.

Action will be taken against officials who force IDPs to leave the relief camps against their will, said Rizvi.

Published in The Express Tribune, October 16^th, 2010.