KOHAT, Feb 20: The Elementary Education Foundation plans to start a five-month primary course by opening 700 new literacy centres for boys and girls in Kohat and Hangu.

A senior official of the Literacy for All Programme told Dawn that hundreds of primary schools were needed rural areas of Hangu and Kohat where most of the students had to travel as far as 16 kilometres to reach their schools.

The official said that they had received hundreds of requests from the elders of these areas, adding that the foundation would soon establish 700 literacy centres in the areas identified by respective communities.

The students of Shakardarra in Kohat have to travel by boat to Mukhad in Punjab as there is no high school in their hometown. The official said that there was no girls’ school in the Sumari union council.

“There are a number of ghost schools in the rural areas. The government should increase salaries of teachers and implement strictly discipline in the existing schools if it is serious to resolve the literacy problems,” he suggested.

“Teachers in 75 per cent of government schools in rural areas remain absent for months. The lower salary package is the main reason for their lack of interest. In most cases a teacher performs the duties of principal, accountant and watchman,” the official pointed out.

Currently, the Elementary Education Foundation is providing a five-month course to the illiterate and is paying Rs2,000 per month to the teachers establishing learning centres in mosques and hujras.

Wasil Nawaz Khattak, Director of the Literacy for All Project in Hangu and Kohat, said that during the past five months, through the learners from all ages programme, an environment of education had been created and children were encouraged to join school.

He claimed that the project had motivated a large number of people and 25-40 per cent boys and girls had joined regular schools.

The project also provides the education facility to Afghan refugees. "It is a multi-pronged project which educates people, reduces unemployment and helps alleviate poverty,” Mr Khattak added.

He said that under a three-batch programme launched in 2005, an amount of Rs4.5 million had been spent to provide teaching facilities to 12,537 learners in 44 union councils of Hangu and Kohat.

Besides, 1,121 people (male and female) have been employed on the contract basis under this programme.