PESHAWAR: The girl students belonging to different tribal regions have expressed grave concern over the government’s apathy to exempt the displaced students from payment of tuition and hostel fee and demanded solution to their problems.

Speaking at a press conference at Peshawar Press Club on Friday, representatives of Fata Students Organisation, including Sheema Nawaz, Shumaila Javaid, Lubna and Gul Rauf, said that the federal government had announced to waive educational fee of the displaced students, but it was yet to fulfil its commitment.

“The students are not allowed to take classes unless they pay the fee,” the female students said. They said that some 331 students from Fata had been studying in Islamia College, Peshawar, alone and they were forced to pay the fee.

Many of the students, they said, had said goodbye to their studies due to poverty and unavailability of other facilities in their regions, but the government was least bothered to take notice of the problems, especially related to their protection.

The students said that population of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) was over 10 million and there were very few educational institutions in the region, which could not cater to the needs of growing number of students.

The government, they said, should establish new institutions, especially the Fata university, medical college, IT university and other professional and technical institutions, so that miseries of the students could be minimised.

The previous federal government, they recalled, had made several commitments, mainly about establishment of new educational institutions, but to no avail. The sitting rulers are least bothered to initiate new schemes for public welfare in Fata and thus the unrest among the people is increasing, they said.

Criticising the elected representatives of Fata, the students said that they should fulfil their responsibilities by facilitating the students and ensuring their protection in respective areas. They also appealed to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Governor Sardar Mehtab Ahmed Khan to pay attention to the problems being faced by the Fata students.

Meanwhile, the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Fata Education Watch has expressed concern over the looming threats to students and said that provision of safer education was the state’s responsibility without any discrimination.

“The government should provide foolproof security to each and every child, teacher and school irrespective of their ownership by government or private individuals. Imposing different security measures on schools would result in harassing the students, teachers and schools management,” said Ibrash Pasha, coordinator of the KP and Fata Education Watch, while talking to mediapersons here on Friday.

He said that provision of educational facilities was the responsibility of the state, but due to various reasons the state was unable to fulfil its responsibility to reach every child. The gap is filled by the private and non-formal sector. Imposition of security checks on the private sector will result in closure of the schools, with no alternative measures by the government to accommodate millions of children.

“It is feared that the government would transfer the burden of security to schools and similarly to parents. Keeping the schools closed will keep children out of school, which is the denial of their right to education,” he said.

Mr Pasha said that the government, elementary and secondary education department and all the law-enforcement agencies should take education seriously as a right of every citizen.

Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2015

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