PESHAWAR, May 31: The NWFP government will provide a study grant of Rs200 to all regular school-going girls from sixth to tenth classes and pay an allowance of Rs1,000 to women teachers in five under-developed districts to enhance female literacy.

This was announced by provincial Education Minister Maulana Fazli Ali Haqqani at a press conference here on Wednesday.

Women teachers in remote districts, including Kohistan, Batgram, Shangla, Dir Upper and Dir Lower and Chitral would be given the extra allowance from the new fiscal year, the minister said.

He said the plan would later be extended to other districts, adding that the provincial government was keen to remove bottlenecks to promote women literacy.

The minister said Rs19 billion would be allocated for the education sector in the next financial year (2006-2007).

He said that the government would also allocate funds for facilities like water and boundary walls of 2,000 schools, besides providing funds for the reconstruction of 200 schools, construction of 720 classrooms, 10,000 adult literacy centres and training of 25,000 teachers.

The government, he said, was also planning to set up 14 degree colleges and two intermediate colleges while work on 11 colleges, boundary walls of 36 colleges, hostel in 14 colleges would completed by next month.

The provincial government would also keen to provide information technology and language laboratories and at least one library in all districts, the minister said. Some 375 teachers have been trained in education academy in Kohat, he added.

The minister claimed that school enrolment had increased to 500,000 since the Mutahidda Majlis-i-Amal had come into power but there was still 1.5 million children out of school.

The government, he said, was endeavouring to increase school enrolment by up to three per cent.

The government needed some Rs57 billion to achieve its target by 2015 to provide education for all children, the minister said.

The provincial government had requested the federal government and donor agencies for funds.

“Another problem that we have not been able to overcome is acquisition of land for construction of more schools,” the minister said.

He highlighted the NWFP government’s initiatives for promotion of education, saying the Frontier government had distributed 3.3 million free textbooks in schools. He said that the provincial government had unearthed some 720 ‘ghost schools’ and dysfunctional schools while 80 schools could not be made functional because of lack of staff and other facilities.

A ghost school in Peshawar was made functional after 14 years, the minister informed.

The EDOs concerned would be suspended if they failed to identify and activate ghost-schools, the minister warned.