Textbooks worth millions gutted in Attock fire

District education official says an inquiry into missing books was underway when the blaze occurred

ATTOCK: Thousands of textbooks, worth millions, were reduced to ashes at a depot in Hazro tehsil of Attock early on Wednesday.

Residents living adjacent to the Government High School number 1 alerted police and Rescue 1122 on Wednesday after they saw thick plumes of smoke rise from the school at around 8am.

But before the rescue teams could arrive to put the blaze out, it had engulfed the entire stock of textbooks.

Attock District Emergency Officer Ishfaq Mian said the local Rescue 1122 centre received a call at around 8am about a fire in a school.

A fire brigade and other Rescue 1122 personnel rushed to the site and doused the fire. However, by that time, the books of the Punjab education department had been burnt.

Sources in the education department said that the provincial education department had dispatched some 100,000 books from the Punjab Textbook Board for grades one through 10 to the Hazro tehsil deputy district officer education.

The books were stored at a cluster centre at the Government High School number 1 in Hazro.

The books were supposed to have been distributed amongst students studying in 75 primary, secondary, high and higher secondary, boys and girls schools of the tehsil once the new academic year commenced.

Sources claimed that the district administration was still preparing lists for the distribution of the books to schools as per the respective student strength.

However, they claimed that as many as 25,000 textbooks for various grades and subjects had already gone “missing” under mysterious circumstances.

Sources claimed that some culprits had allegedly sold the books in the market and to cover up the matter, the remaining books had been set alight.

Sources further said that an inquiry by the provincial education authorities in the matter is underway to ascertain the facts.

Residents have raised questions over the state of security at the school, noting that despite the presence of CCTV cameras and presence of a watchman, how could unidentified people break into the school and set the textbooks on fire.

When contacted District Education Officer-Secondary Raja Amjad Iqbal confirmed that around 25,000 textbooks had gone missing as per the inventory and that an inquiry team from the provincial education department is conducting a probe to ascertain the facts.

Responding to another question about the books being burnt on Wednesday morning, he said that the watchman was on duty at the time and that he did not see anyone break the locks to set books on fire.

He said that a team of district administration comprising officials of education department and district monitoring team is probing the fire incident and would fix responsibility.  

Published in The Express Tribune, February 6^th, 2020.