HARIPUR: Most schools in Haripur district didn’t get deworming pills and teacher training material on Monday.

Haripur is among 19 Khyber Pakhtunkhwa districts, where the federal government’s School-Based Deworming Programme is being implemented jointly by the health and education departments and a private partner organisation.

The education department sources told Dawn that the teacher training material and follow-up monitoring guidelines for the initiative were to be delivered to the teachers of government primary schools on Monday.

They, however, said the delivery wasn’t made by the contractor as he didn’t know about the way to most centres established for the purpose. The sources said pills and training material were delivered to only eight centres, while teachers waited in vain at other centres and didn’t take classes.

They said 17 centres had been established with each covering 15-30 schools for teacher training on how to administer deworming pills to the school-age children to prevent soil transmitted helminths and for programme monitoring.

A staff member of the private partner organisation said the consignment was delivered to the contractor for delivery to all centres.

He said according to his information, the material was delivered to most centres but if the delay proved, action would be taken against the contractor.

Meanwhile, the annual sports tournaments in government schools of Haripur district will begin today (Tuesday).

District education officer Umar Kundi told reporters here that all schools were divided into five zones and their students would exhibit their skills in cricket, hockey, volleyball, soccer, handball, table tennis, tug of war and other sports.

He said the education department didn’t arrange any event for the physically-challenged students though the district had many schools for such children, where they regularly took part in sports events.

Published in Dawn, October 15th, 2019