TIMERGARA: The future of over 1,000 students of the government girls higher secondary school, Ziarat Talash, here is at stake as the school’s building demolished in 2015 has yet to be reconstructed.

Talking to reporters on Friday, the students, their parents and local government representatives said that Humqadam, an implementing partner of the Department for International Development (DFID), had demolished the school’s building in 2015 and pledged to reconstruct it until the end of 2017, but to no avail. They pointed out that after the school’s demolition, its foundations were dug up but no further work was carried out.

“We take classes in tents or in the open as there is no seating place for us,” a sixth grader said. “My father wishes to shift me to another school from next year because of absence of school’s building,” another student complained.

Fazal Qadir, a district councillor, said Humqadam, under its school construction and rehabilitation programme (SCRP), demolished the building after due paperwork and budgeting in 2015, but reconstruction work could not be started due to unknown reasons.

Another councillor said the school’s administration had arranged three classes in tents, some in verandas while rest of the students took classes on the floor on the secondary portion of the school.

A teacher of the school while requesting anonymity said the staff too lacked proper seating facility. She said there were 40 teachers and they used one of the four rooms as staffroom. She said only three classes had rooms in the secondary portion.

A staffer of Humqadam NGO said earlier it was agreed to construct 16x25 feet classrooms but later the education department suggested 20x24 feet rooms that led to unnecessary delay in reconstruction work. He said the organisation was all set to start work on the project once the re-designing and budget revising was finalised.

The parents and local government representatives threatened to bring girl students on road if the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government, authorities of Humqadam and DFID failed to start work on the building before the next academic session.

A source in the education department said like this, the buildings of government girls higher secondary school, Chakdara, and government girls higher secondary school, Timergara, had also been demolished which still awaited reconstruction. The source said the department was unable to reconstruct these schools due to their heavy budgets.

Published in Dawn, December 10th, 2017