RAWALPINDI, Oct 3: Residents of Ahata Mitho Khan, near Kola Centre at Saddar, forced the education department to cancel the transfer and merging of Government Model High School for boys into Government Denny’s High School, near Marir Chowk.

More than 100 local residents gathered in front of the school and staged a protest and also contacted a local MPA of the area, Shaheryar Riaz, to solve the problem.

Malik Riasat, Ghulam Mustafa Dar, Saqeer Ahmed, Sheikh Zaheer Ahmed and Sheikh Yamin and other local residents participated in the protest demonstration.

“We did not allow the boys school to be shifted to another place as it was established after the demand of local residents of the area,” said Malik Naseer, a protester, while talking to this reporter.

According to details, the education department merged the boys school which includes 350 students at Denny’s High School and transferred 23 staff members, including eight females in other schools.

Headmaster Zaheer Ahmed received a letter from the education department for his transfer on September 29 and next day, the department issued the notification for transferring and merging of the school.

He was asked to report to Government High School Bahal, Chak Beli Road, Rawat but later, the order was cancelled on Wednesday. The vacant place where the school was located was to be utilised for Pak-Islamia Elementary school for girls, with a total enrollment of 150 students.

But, the local residents expressed resentment, while stating that the school building was surrounded by auto-mechanic workshops and it was not an appropriate place for girls.

Stepping in to resolve the issue, PML-N MPA Shaheryar Riaz managed to hire another building for the girls’ school and handed over the documents of the hiring of the building to Executive District Officer Education, Qazi Zahoorul Haq. Upon this, the EDO education cancelled the transferring and merging of the school.

“We merge the boys school into Denny’s High School as the girls school Pak-Islamia was on rented property and the landowner vacated the building and we decided to shift the girls school to that place,” said Qazi Zahoorul Haq, Executive District Officer Education, while talking to Dawn.

He said that it was routine matter of transferring and merging of the school but teacher politics forced the department to cancel the orders.

When PML-N MPA, Shaheryar Riaz was contacted, he said that local residents in his constituency expressed anger over the transfer and merger of the boys’ school and he negotiated the issue with the education department.