PESHAWAR, Dec 7: The non-availability of science teachers have deprived a large number of girls of the Government Degree College for Women, Parachinar, Kurram Agency, of taking admission in science classes at the graduation level.

Officials in the NWFP Governor’s Fata Secretariat, Peshawar, admit that over 150 girls from far-flung areas of the Kurram Agency have obtained admission in humanities groups during the current academic year because of non-availability of science teachers in the agency.

The women college, Parachinar, with more than 300 students, was commissioned in 1996 to provide higher education facilities to females of the tribal area at their doorstep.

But the Directorate of Higher Education, NWFP, and other competent authorities have failed to provide permanent teaching staff to the college.

Even the principal’s post is still vacant and a teacher of BPS-17 is managing the affairs of the college, exposing claims of the government that higher education will be made available in remote parts of the country on priority.

Before the establishment of the degree college for women in Parachinar, the first higher education institution for females in the entire tribal belt, the government had reserved six seats for Kurram Agency in Frontier College for Women, Peshawar. But the quota was abolished subsequently.

The Federally Administered Tribal Areas, bordering Afghanistan, constitute the most deprived and backward region of the country. Official statistics show overall literacy rate in Fata is 16 per cent and female literacy rate is only 3 per cent.

Literacy rate among females in Orakzai Agency, the most remote part of Fata, is hardly 1 per cent.

Interestingly, while the directorate of higher education has yet to provide permanent staff, library and transport facilities to the Parachinar college, the NWFP Governor’s Fata Secretariat has already set up six more new degree colleges for women in the tribal belt during the current annual development programme.

Total enrolment in the newly established six women degree colleges is 271. While in Orakzai Agency, only 11 female students have obtained admission to the degree college.

The secretariat has earmarked an amount of Rs133 million in Fata ADP for the construction of additional classrooms, hostels, libraries and provision of laboratory equipment in these colleges.

Officials said that all arrangements had been made on a temporary basis and the salaries of staff were being paid out of the ADP.

NWFP Governor Syed Iftikhar Hussain Shah recently inaugurated another degree college for women in Sadda, some 25 kilometres east of the agency headquarters Parachinar, while the college already functioning in the agency is still without the required staff.