July 15, 2003	Tuesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 14, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, July 14: The government on Monday decided to set up a facilitation cell in the education ministry for registration of private educational institutions.

This decision was taken in a meeting between Education Minister Zobaida Jalal, CDA chairman Abdul Rauf Chaudhry and the private schools management committee representative, Brig Saeed Khokar (retired).

The meeting was called in the backdrop of CDA’s campaign against private educational institutions under which the authority had taken action against 86 schools located in different residential areas.

It was decided in the meeting that the CDA would devise a criteria to end the row between private schools and the authority. The criteria will vary for nursery, primary and high level schools.

The education minister also asked the CDA to sit with the private school management committee and resolve the issue amicably as early as possible.

She said she would talk to Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat, who was also in charge of the CDA, to provide land to private educational institutions on the same rates offered to government departments.

The place should either be in sectors G-11, H-11 and Zone-4 of the federal capital or in the corner of the same sectors where such schools are located. However, Ms Jalal urged the CDA to ensure that the alternative place provided to private schools was easily approachable for the students.

During the meeting, the CDA chairman proposed that the authority was ready to charge Rs5,000 per square yard from private schools for the plot which it provided to the government at Rs1,000 per square yard.

However, Ms Jalal rejected the idea and asked the CDA chairman to be lenient towards the private schools management committee because they were pursuing a noble cause and helping the government in the field of education. She said public-private partnership was the hallmark of the Education Sector Reforms (ESR).

Justifying CDA’s action, Mr Chaudhry told the minister that the campaign against private schools had been started on the complaints of the residents of the localities where these schools were situated.

He said according to the CDA by-laws, no commercial activity was allowed in the residential area. He said the authority had also clearly notified that no private schools would be established in the residential areas after December 1999.

However, the chairman assured the minister that the CDA was ready to facilitate the private sector in the field of education.

Ms Jalal said about 150 private schools were helping the government by catering to the needs of thousands of students in the Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT).

Unless and until the government facilitates the private sector, she said, the goals of Education for All (EFA) could not be achieved.

It was also decided that another meeting between the CDA and the education ministry would be arranged, most probably next week, after the authority completed its proposals about the criteria.