Girls’ college to get boundary wall after five years

FDE writes to PWD to calculate estimated cost of building wall

ISLAMABAD: A girls’ college located in the peripheries of the capital will finally be getting a boundary wall five years after students first started attending classes there.

An under-construction building of the Islamabad Model College for Girls (IMCG) in Sector I-14/3 had become a hub of drug addicts and criminals due to the absence of boundary wall on one side of the building.

With floors of the college strewn with cigarette butts, burnt spoons and aluminium foils and injections had prompted residents of the area to demand that the college should be cleaned, its building completed and furnished with proper facilities so that they do not have to send their daughters to far-off colleges.

The Federal Directorate of Education (FDE), though, has finally taken notice of the matter and has initiated the process of building the boundary wall and finishing the incomplete structure of the building.

The notice was taken after the matter was reported by The Express Tribune earlier this month.

In this regard, the FDE has written a letter to the Public Works Department (PWD) to provide an estimate of how much would the boundary wall at the college cost so that the required sum can be released and work on the wall started.

Earlier, the college was slated for renovation under the third phase of Prime Minister’s Education Reforms Programme. The programme was supposed to rehabilitate all colleges in the capital.

With the implementation of the programme some way off, since only phase one has been completed so far, FDE officials have decided to initiate work on the building under the second phase of the programme.

While the PWD has yet to provide an estimate of how much the wall will cost, the government plans to release Rs5 million initially so that work on it can start.

Besides construction of the wall, the process of budget allocation and recruitment of regular teaching and non-teaching staff at the college is also in the pipeline.

The college has apparently also been functioning without a budget and lacks sufficient regular staff.

Recently, an evaluation team of Planning Commission headed by Deputy Director Faheem Khan had visited the college. The principal of the college, Prof Balqees Nabi, had given the team a tour of the college.

The team pointed out that the college lacked an auditorium in addition to the boundary wall.

Based on the Planning Commission’s evaluation report, the finance ministry will approve the project concept-4 of the college to recruit regular staff and allocate an annual budget.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 22^nd, 2017.