GUJRAT: The district government plans to enroll 200,000 children in schools in the current academic year.

District Coordination Officer Liaqat Ali Chatha said at the ‘meet the press’ at the Gujrat Press Club on Tuesday.

The target is far ahead of the Punjab government’s task of enrolling 83,000 children in Gujrat district.

Mr Chatha said the target would be achieved with the involvement of local community. Six notables from a village would be inducted in the village council which would work enrolling the children in the village primary school.

Other than education, he said, the district government was also focusing on health and roads.

He said that a Rs30 million burn unit would be set up at the Aziz Bhatti Shaheed hospital, and a 14-kilometer portion of old GT Road from Kathala Chenab to Rehmania Bridge would be renovated. Green belts will line the portion while gates will also be built on two points of the city.

He said that private companies had been asked to install street lights on poles along the median of main highway. The district government, he said, would rehabilitate the drains on either side of GT Road and in the city whereas GT Road and the underpass on Kathala railway track would also be rehabilitated.

He said roads and civic infrastructure of the journalist colony would be improved and the colony would be handed over to the Gujrat Tehsil Municipal administration. He said he would write to the Punjab government to release Rs1 million for the Gujrat Press Club.