June 14, 2006	Wednesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 17, 1427

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PESHAWAR, June 13: The NWFP has lodged protest with the federal government over allocation of less than four per cent of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) for the education sector in the budget. The province had conveyed its reservations to the federal government in this regard, said NWFP Education Minister Maulana Fazal Ali Haqqani on Tuesday, the second day of a conference on ‘Education system and the 21st century’ organised by the Frontier Education Foundation.

The federal government had ignored primary and secondary education and only universities had been given attention, the minister said.

Citing his meeting with President Pervez Musharraf during deliberations on education, the minister said he had floated the idea that four per cent of the GDP should be allocated for the education sector to raise the literacy level in the country.

He said the federal education minister had agreed with his suggestion, which prompted President Musharraf to issue directives to enhance the education budget by 50 per cent.

Despite the directives, the federal government had allocated 2.2 per cent of the budget for education, he said.

He said the provincial government had recorded its protest with Salman Shah, Adviser to the Prime Minister on finance.

He said provision of free books, uniform and remission of fees by the provincial government had led to an increase of 500,000 in enrolment in primary schools.

He said the NWFP government had decided to increase the education budget by 20 per cent.

Mr Haqqani said the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal government had raised allocation for education from Rs1.35 billion to Rs19 billion.

The provincial government, he said, had appointed 40,000 teachers and 5,000 more were being recruited during the current month.

He said that the government was faced with an uphill task of eliminating absenteeism in primary schools. He said thousands of teachers had been promoted but the results were yet to improve.