Three more schools shut for running rumour mill

Peshawar district administration, KPPSRA take joint action

PESHAWAR: A day after seven private schools were closed, the district administration and the provincial private school regulator on Thursday closed another three schools for their part in spreading rumours about the polio vaccine. This raises the total number of schools closed in Peshawar to 10.

In a joint operation, the district administration and the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Private Schools Authority (KPPSRA) has sealed at least three schools around the provincial capital on Thursday.

Muhammad Sajid, a spokesperson for the Peshawar district administration confirmed that the joint action was over the April 22 incident.

He added that Additional Assistant Commissioner Inyat Atta and Private School’s Association Deputy Director Sohail Aziz sealed the schools who had participated in propagating propaganda against polio campaigns in the provincial capital.

The schools sealed thus far include Darul Qalam Model School in Mashokhel, Iqra Rozatul Atfal Trust, Iqra School Hassan Ghari, Hallmark School, Muslim Cambridge School, Muslim Standard School, and Oxford Public School in Hassan Ghari, Pine Breeze School in Hassan Ghari, Crescent School City Home GT Road and Iqra Rozatul Atfal Jaghra road.

Meanwhile, a K-PPRA official told The Express Tribune that while they had sealed the administration blocks of these schools, they had allowed the schools to continue with their academic classes.

K-PPRA Managing Director Sardar Asad Haroon explained that the schools were closed after they conducted an inquiry in the incidents surrounding the April 22 incident.

“We identified them [targeted schools] for challenging the writ of the state and inciting the public,” Haroon said, adding that they had recommended the provincial government to de-register these schools.

The public hospitals of the provincial capital on were filled to capacity on April 22 when over 25,000 children were brought by their parents for check-ups after fake news spread that children were falling sick after taking anti-polio drops.

By midday, the entire city was caught in the hysteria as people hauled their children in the sweltering heat to hospitals where rush caused a shortage of space and attendants were seen quarrelling with security staff.

Doctors, however, said that most of the children brought into the major hospitals of Peshawar were not ill and some only complained of dizziness or stomach ache and almost all were sent home with first aid.

The patients included 5,000 children to the Hayatabad Medical Centre while around 5,000 children were taken to the Lady Reading Hospital (LRH).

At least another 8,000 checked in at the Naseerullah Babar Hospital and another 6,000 at the Khyber Teaching Hospital, while 1,700 reported at Molvi Gee Hospital. Residents of Peshawar’s Masho Khel area had set a BHU on fire to vent their anger.

The rumours had forced the provincial health authorities to temporarily suspend the anti-polio campaign. However, 12 people were arrested for allegedly starting the malicious rumours but little headway was made since.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 31^st, 2019.