GUJRAT: The dilapidated buildings of the nine government schools that had been declared dangerous were demolished and the construction work on all these sites was launched on Sunday.

A sum of Rs49 million will be spent on the construction of the new buildings that have to be completed by Feb 16, 2016, as per the district government’s stipulated time.

The demolished buildings were of government girls primary school, Shadiwal, primary schools of Saroki, Gumti, Samrala, Chak Bhula, Haqiqa and Kolian Shah Husain, girls high school, Dilawarpur, and Girls High school, Bhawanj.

Gujrat DCO Liaquat Ali Chatha along with EDO (education) Kashif Tahir visited the sites of two under-construction schools in Shadiwal and Saroki on Sunday to examine the pace and quality of work and issued a warning to the contractor and buildings department officials to ensure completion of the projects prior to the start of admissions in the next academic session.

An official of the district government said the education department had conducted a survey of dangerous buildings of public sector educational institutions more than six months ago, especially schools, on the direction of the provincial government.

The survey declared 27 buildings dangerous while some of the school structures were found partially damaged that would be repaired with available funds of the district government.

The provincial government had been asked to allocate funds for the reconstruction of 27 buildings of schools declared dangerous across the district and out of those, nine highly dangerous structures were demolished on a priority basis whereas the demolition of remaining rundown buildings is said to be under process.

Published in Dawn, December 28th, 2015