Govt urged to set up schools in tribal districts

The QAM president said that the people were hoping for preferential treatment after the passage of the 25th Amendment

LANDI KOTAL: Residents of the Khyber district on Monday demanded that the provincial government work to build new educational institutions in the merged district.

This was demanded by Azam Khan Masud, the president of the Qabayal Awami Movement (QAM) during a news conference at the Bara Press Club in Khyber on Monday.

Masud said that the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (K-P) Higher Education Department recently sanctioned the construction of 15 new degree colleges in the province for Rs0.9 billion, but it ignored the tribal districts.

Masud said that due to the two decades of militancy and subsequent military operations in different parts of erstwhile federally administered tribal areas (Fata), the education system in the region has been badly affected. Moreover, hundreds of schools and colleges were destroyed by militants during that period, he said.

The QAM president said that the people of the tribal districts were hoping for preferential treatment after the passage of the 25th Amendment with special emphasis on the reconstruction of damaged educational institutions and building new ones.

Meanwhile, the Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JIU-F) leader in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Naeema Kishwar submitted a Call-to-Attention-Notice (CAN) against the government’s decision of ignoring the merged districts while approving educational institutions for rest of the province. 

Published in The Express Tribune, June 4^th, 2020.