ISLAMABAD: At the start of its campaign to clear Islamabad of its slums on Monday, the CDA also demolished part of a school run by a trust and providing free education to slum children.

“We had 285 children on rolls in two ‘Pehli Kiran’ school buildings in H-10 and I-10 target area, one of which was bulldozed,” said Wajahat Abbas, representative of the Jamshed Akhtar Qureshi Education Trust (JAQ).

JAQ runs seven schools, educating 1,520 slum children, according to him. “We provide them free books, uniform and daily lunch, and milk and fruits once a week,” he said.

“Our trust is not funded by (foreign) donor organizations but by the civil society of Islamabad. Our schools are wood-and-metal structures with the aim of moving them wherever the slum is moved,” said Mr Abbas.

“When the CDA demolition squad arrived unannounced this morning, I asked our worker Ghazanfar Ali to disassemble the structure. He was on the roof when the CDA bulldozer hit the steel structure, knocking him down and causing injuries,” he added.

However the incident saved the other structure of the school meeting the same fate as the CDA agreed to disassembling it.

“Each structure had cost the trust Rs350,000 to erect,” Mr Abbas said.

Civil society activist Tahira Abdullah condemned the destruction of one school structure. “CDA did not have to do that. It could have been shifted to some other area to the benefit of poor children,” she said.