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| October 20, 2005 | Thursday | Ramzan 15, 1426 |
23 school buildings in Kohat damaged
KOHAT, Oct 19: Twenty-three school buildings in Kohat, which had been declared dangerous years ago, have been further weakened by the October 8 earthquake and aftershocks.
These school buildings may not survive another jolt, officials said.
The executive district officer works department confirmed that the literacy department had submitted preliminary estimate of the costs of repairs of these buildings amounting to Rs47 million.
The authorities concerned had failed to pay serious attention to repeated requests made by the education department in the past for the repairs of these rickety buildings.
The buildings identified for early repairs are female middle schools of Babri Banda, Dog Ismail, Ustarzai Payan, Malgin and Gulshanabad. Already declared dangerous, these schools have developed cracks of serious nature in the aftermath of the quake, said deputy district education officer (female).
Among the decrepit male school buildings are the Togh Bala High School and Shadi Khel Middle School, an official of the executive district officer education (male) told this correspondent.
He said that more than 1200 students of these two schools were attending classes in the safe portions of the buildings, with 200 to 250 boys crammed in a single classroom.
The other building damaged due to the earthquake is that of the Malangabad Primary School which needs urgent repairs.
Officials in the male and female district education office told Dawn that they had directed all the principals of the primary, middle, and secondary schools of the district to submit reports of the damage caused to their building structures.
They said that staff of the 23 schools had themselves approached the department soon after the earthquake.
The in-charge of the development wing of the education department, Hazrat Gul, visited damaged buildings on Monday along with other staff to see how many of them were repairable and which of them need to be vacated for reconstruction, an official said.
The schools and literacy department in two separate letters dispatched to the district coordination officer had requested for making immediate alternative arrangements for students whose school buildings had become extremely dangerous.
In response to a question, an official said that it was the responsibility of the provincial and district governments for shifting these schools to safe buildings and that they could only advise staff to take classes in the open or shut down the educational institutions.
Apart from government schools, private institutions, mostly set up in small rented houses, had also suffered damage but their sponsors were keeping the matter under wraps because they had set up schools in violation of rules and regulations.
They had no playgrounds or open spaces where students could take shelter in the event of any disaster. Some of these schools had been opened in two and three marla houses in congested residential areas of the city where environment was suffocating even in normal conditions, a survey conducted by this correspondent shows.
If they declare their buildings unsafe, it might create panic and scare away students, their principal source of income.
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