PESHAWAR: Ittehad Tanzeemat-i-Madaris Pakistan (ITMP) has declined to share data of religious seminaries with personnel of any law enforcement agency and warned to announce a protest movement in case the process of data collection is not stopped forthwith.

This was announced by ITMP provincial representatives, including Maulana Hussain Ahmed, Dr Attaur Rehman, Mufti Fazal Jamil Rizvi, Allama Nazir Hussain Mathhari, Maulana Abdul Aziz and Mufti Sirajul Hassan, while addressing a press conference here on Friday.

Sharing details of the agreement signed between the ITMP and government on May 6, 2019, they accused the federal government of failing to set up regional centres for registration of the religious seminaries with ministry of federal education and professional training. They asked for early implementation of the decision to avoid any possible complication.

They said as per the agreement both the parties, the education ministry and heads of religious boards/seminaries, had decided registration of all 30,000 seminaries operating in the country, but the government was yet to fulfill its responsibilities.

The government, they said had assured to facilitate the seminaries in getting registered with vocational training institutions so that their students could acquire vocational/technical education as well. We expected that government will fulfill its promises to provide all necessary patronage to seminaries so that our students could also get maximum chances to get contemporary education besides religious education but no such steps were taken so far, they said.

The ITMP leaders said instead of materialising the agreement the personnel of various law enforcement agencies had started collecting details regarding the students and teachers, saying that visiting the female seminaries and that also at night was not only violation of the agreement but intolerable for ITMP.

They said the ITMP was a joint organisation of five boards of religious seminaries which was fully determined to work as per the agreement and urged the government to set up the promised regional centres so that the process of seminaries’ registration could be started forthwith.

The ITMP representatives said they were ready to share data of students of all Madaris to ministry of education as per agreement, but won’t allow sharing data, especially of female students, to police stations and other organisations.

Published in Dawn, August 10th, 2019