PESHAWAR, March 5: British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw visited a religious seminary, or madressah, here on Friday.
The principal of the Jamia Imdadul Aloom Islamia Maulana Hassan Jan and students received the UK secretary for foreign affairs and presented him with a copy of the Holy Quran.
He inspected the library, hostel and classrooms and talked to the students and teachers. About 1,160 Pakistani and Afghan refugee children are getting religious and modern education in the seminary.
According to official estimates, about 1,065,927 students are getting religious education in 6,518 registered seminaries in Pakistan, but there is no exact data about unregistered seminaries in the country.
After the 9/11 terrorism attacks the government planned to introduce a uniform policy to check the growing number of madressahs in the country and introduce a new curriculum for them. But the government has failed to implement this policy. The visiting foreign secretary was informed that the seminary was being run through donations from the local community.
Extraordinary security measures were taken to ensure security to the visiting British minister. Traffic flow on roads from where the motorcade of Mr Straw had to pass was suspended causing heavy traffic jams early in the day, in the Cantonment area. Due to suspension of traffic on the main roads, large groups of people were seen waiting for transport at several bus stops.
