Education for all: 457 schools to be freed from illegal occupants

Chief secretary gives Education Department seven days.

MULTAN: Chief Secretary Nasir Mehmood Khosa has directed the divisional commissioners in the province to ensure that schools were freed from illegal occupants.

Some 457 schools across the Punjab are under illegal occupation.

The instruction was issued on Saturday in a departmental meeting after a report was presented to Khosa by the school education secretary. He was told that in most cases local landlords had setup their deras and cattle farms on the school premises.



Millions of rupees worth of government property was going wasted, the chief secretary was told. The education secretary said that some government officials had been facilitating the occupants.

Khosa ordered the officials concerned to raid the schools and order the occupants to vacate the school buildings. He also instructed them to arrest those who resisted.

He told that officials not to accept any administrative and political pressure.

He gave the officials seven days to free the schools.



Later talking to The Express Tribune, Multan Commissioner Khurram Ali Agha said that 80 per cent of the illegally occupied schools in the Punjab were girls’ schools.

He said once the school were freed, more than 200,000 students would be able to return to schools.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 24^th, 2012.