PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has extended the Tameer-i-School Programme (TSP) to the entire province following encouraging participation of philanthropists in its pilot stage to ensure availability of missing facilities in government schools in five districts, according to officials.

Under the programme, which was launched three months ago, the philanthropists, well-to-do families and donor agencies take responsibility for providing missing facilities in government schools of their choice.

The programme, earlier launched as pilot project in five districts, including Peshawar, Dera Ismail Khan, Nowshera, Mardan and Abbottabad, has now been extended to the entire province, deputy director Elementary Education Foundation (EEF) Hameedullah Shah told Dawn.

As pilot project launched in five districts about 122 schools were selected for provision of facilities such as construction of additional classrooms, boundary wall, computer labs, washrooms, water supply schemes, etc.

The programme was started as pilot project three months ago in five districts

Estimated cost of providing basic facilities in these 122 schools was Rs31 million, he said, adding that the philanthropists and donors had so far provided Rs15 million in three months. Construction work is underway on the designated facilities at a fast pace, he said.

According to the plan, the donated funds are spent through the parent teachers’ councils of the respective schools, he said. Stress has been laid on transparency as all details of donated funds and construction work on missing facilities in schools have been placed on the TSP website.

At the time of donating fund for a school, a donor or philanthropist is given the code number of the respective school so that they could monitor the construction work.

“Once the donor feed that code number to the official website of TSP, the status of the facility along with its picture appears,” said the foundation’s deputy director.

Mr Shah said that monitoring system had been put in place to record the progress on construction of missing facilities and the funds spent.

He said that android phone sets had been given to the secretaries and chairmen of the PTCs of the respective schools for taking pictures of the under-construction facilities and ensuring regular correspondence of the PTC members and EEF.

Before starting the construction, secretary of the PTC takes pictures of the missing facility and forward it to the community literacy officer of EEF for placing it on the website along with the required funds, he said.

The EEF official said that when the construction work was halfway through the spent amount with pictures of the under-construction facilities were again placed on the website for information of all concerned.

He said that all details were placed on the website once more when the work was completed.

Mr Shah said that the donated funds were released to the contractors in three stages at the ratio of 10 per cent before start of work, 30 per cent in the second phase and 70 per cent in the third stage to finalise construction of the facility.

Published in Dawn, July 12th, 2014