LAHORE: The disasters are not only playing havoc with the schools and students, where they strike, but all around in terms of limited access to schools, learning environment, cumulative and long-term effects on communities and financial burden for rehabilitation of schools.

And besides natural calamities, the disasters are taking an ugly turn as terrorism has entered the schools as was witnessed in Peshawar. This calls for creating awareness among students and parents as well as imparting training to teachers for making schools safe.

This was the consensus among the speakers at a seminar on “Punjab school safety plan of action – from planning to policy and implementation,” organised by the Pakistan Girls’ Education Initiative’s (PGEI) Punjab chapter in collaboration with Unicef and the Punjab School Education Department at a local hotel on Wednesday.

Giving a presentation on the subject, Institute of Social and Policy Sciences (I-SAPS) Research Fellow Ahmed Ali said the natural disasters continued to hit schools and the 2005 earthquake and floods since 2010 had wreaked havoc on them. In the absence of proper safety plans, he said the growth and education of children was being hampered.

Citing an example, he said, the 2010 floods had damaged 9,088 schools in the country and the respective provincial governments also used 5,790 more schools as shelters and hindered the education of students, whose schools were not directly affected by the floods. In Punjab alone, he said, 1,500 schools were damaged and some 430,000 children were affected.

It was estimated that at least Rs2 billion were required to rehabilitate the damaged schools. However, no funds were allocated till 2012 and later an allocation of Rs500 million was ensured by the Punjab Assembly Standing Committee on Education. “Only 50pc of the schools damaged in the 2010 floods have been rehabilitated,” Mr Ali stated.

The 2014 floods damaged 1,693 schools in Punjab and later 400 other schools were used as shelters, of which 290 were still being used as shelters. The rehabilitation cost stands at Rs1.4 billion but not a single penny has so far been diverted for the rehabilitation of schools.

Mr Ali said the school education department and I-SAPS had recently conducted a baseline study of Disaster Awareness Mitigation and Support (DAMS) in six high-risk union councils of Rajanpur and Dera Ghazi Khan and the major repercussions due to natural disasters included shelter, food shortage and education/schools. The girls also said they did not receive any training with regard to Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR).

The I-SAPS Research Fellow said the need was to make schools safe, maintain learning environment and continuity of quality education. He also informed the audience that the Disaster Risk Management (DRM) was not new in terms of school education as a Punjab DRM Plan was made in 2008 to make schools safe, preparedness at school level and decision to include DRR in the curriculum.

Earlier, Punjab School Education Department Deputy Secretary (Planning and Budget) Qaiser Rasheed said there was an urgent need to adopt measures (DRR and DRM) because the department as well as partner schools under the Punjab Education Foundation were imparting education to some 12 million children in the province. “If these children will be exposed to risk, its effect will be manifold,” he added.

Stating that the students in primary schools were too young and in high schools so poor that they could not take care of themselves, Mr Rasheed stressed that students must be sensitised about disasters and be able take the message to their homes and community. He also presented 22 points to ensure disaster risk reduction in schools.

DIG Dr Haider Ashraf expressed his resolve that the Lahore police would do its utmost to protect the schools and said the police had categorised schools in terms of risk and held meetings with principals and finalised detailed SOPs to check terrorism. He stressed that all segments of society should cooperate with the police.

Punjab Emergency Services Director-General Dr Rizwan Naseer expressed his resolve to impart training to all public schools’ teachers by Jan 15 to deal with disasters. He said the Rescue 1122 was also observing the year 2015 as “A Year of Safety”. — Staff Reporter

Published in Dawn, December 26th, 2014