PESHAWAR: The district administration has started issuing licences of non-prohibited bore weapons to the educational institutions.

“The process of getting licence of non-prohibited bore weapons can be completed easily,” Deputy Commissioner Zahirul Islam told Dawn. When asked how many licences could be issued to a school, he said that he would issue even 10 licences to the administration of a school if it required the same number of licences for its security guards.

Know more: Govt allows teachers, staff to carry arms into schools

Sources said that provincial home department issued instructions to the district administration to award licences of non-prohibited bore to the educational institutions immediately. “The process of awarding licences to the applicants has been made very simple and can be completed within in a day,” sources said.

Normally it takes 15 to 20 days to get a computerised arms licence.

Institutions warned of legal action if security guidelines not followed

In the wake of massacre of 150 persons including 134 students in Army Public School and College on December 16, the provincial government instructed all public and private educational institutions to take measure for guarding their institutions.

The security guidelines, issued by the government, include raising the boundary walls of educational institutions up to 10 or 13 feet, fixing barbed wire on the walls, installation of close circuit television cameras and walkthrough gates.

A few days ago Information Minister Mushtaq Ahmed Ghani told a press conference that teachers could bring licenced arms to educational institutions to engage the terrorists, in case of attack, for sometime till arrival of law enforcers and security personnel.

Sources said that around 40 licences of different bores were issued to the administrations of different schools during the last few days. So far only private schools were issued licences because the administrations of government schools didn’t apply for getting licences, they added.

Sources said that district administration was issuing manual licences to the school administrations as the computerised one took two to three weeks. Mostly, sources said, the headmasters of the schools applied for getting licences of 12 bore repeaters, pistols and .22 rifles.

Police and district administration have formed different teams to visit schools to check security measures. However, a large number of schools, particularly the government schools, have not followed the security guidelines issued to them by the provincial government.

A senior police officer told Dawn that so far police issued ‘no objection certificate’ to only 118 government and private schools as rest of institutions had not followed the security guidelines. He said that the SHOs were issuing warnings to those schools, which had not taken security measures. The issuance of NOC to only 118 schools out of 3,900 including 1,400 government and 2,500 private schools was very discouraging, the official said.

SSP Dr Mian Mohammad Saeed, when contacted, said that police e issued reminders to the administration of the schools about making proper security arrangements. “I have set January 22 as deadline for implementation of security guidelines,” he said. After the expiry of the deadline, he said, FIR would be registered against the headmasters of the schools for not following the government directives about security arrangements.

Published in Dawn, January 20th, 2015

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