Fata teachers seek reinstatement, opening of schools
PESHAWAR, May 26 Dozens of teachers belonging to different tribal regions on Thursday held a protest demonstration at Sher Shah Suri Road near Peshawar press club against the closure of hundreds of community schools in Fata and demanded immediate reopening of the institutions.

The protesters were led by Nazar Gul Afridi, Khandan Mohmand, Sadiq Afridi, Khayal Gul and Shah Gul along with hundreds of male and female teachers, technical and clerical staff.

They were holding placards and banners inscribed with demands for their reinstatement and reopening of the community schools in the tribal region. They also raised slogans against the delay in reopening of the institutions.

Talking to media persons the teachers’ leaders said about 956 community schools had been closed through a notification by the Fata secretariat on January 1 this year for no solid reason depriving the poor students of education facilities for no fault of theirs.

The schools, they said, had been established in 1998 with financial assistances of Norwegian government for a period of three years, in which over 2,000 teachers including females for 86,000 male and female students had been appointed. Similarly, 956 class-IV employees had also been appointed in the schools.

These schools, they claimed, were so essential that the army had also supported them by providing extra teachers and facilitated the students living in the far-flung localities of the neglected regions.

Keeping in view the role and importance of the schools, they said the government had included them in the annual development programme but they were closed all of a sudden.

In remote areas of the Fata, the teachers said, there was no school and these community schools were the only source of education for the people.

“The enrollment of the students kept increasing every year but the Fata secretariat closed the institutions on the pretext of poor enrollments and stopped paying salaries to the teachers,” they said and termed it total injustice with the people.

The protesters demanded of president, prime minister, governor Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and director education Fata to accept their demands otherwise they would set up a hunger strike camp in front of the Parliament House in Islamabad.Dawn

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