SWABI, Dec 3: Like the other 23 districts of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, all the 81 government middle schools in Swabi district are without playground facility, which shows how much the government cares for the promotion of sports and physical health of students.

Senior officials of the education department told Dawn here on Friday that there was no plan to provide the playground facility to these educational institutions. They said that like Swabi the all middle schools of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa had no playgrounds.

The officials said that they had brought this into the notice of the top provincial education authorities, but of no avail.

When contacted, heads of several boys and girls middle schools complained that many government schools had even no physical education teachers.

“You are talking about playgrounds; we have no physical education teachers to conduct co-curricular activities in our schools or maintain the discipline,” said one teacher.

Some headmasters said that each year they conducted the annual sport activities in the open fields hired for a day from local farmers.

Sources said that headmasters and district sports committee in their annual meeting demanded that that government should at least reserve one playground at tehsil level where middle schools could conduct annual sport activities.

“We need a playground in Swabi, Topi, Chota Lahor and Razaar tehsils on urgent basis,” a headmaster said and added that the government should do more for promotion of sports in the province to engage youth in healthy activities.

The headmistresses said that due to cultural restrictions girls’ could not play in the open fields and the government should think about providing them sports facilities, at least at big town level.

They also demanded appointment of physical education teachers in the newly upgraded schools because the PETs could inculcate the spirit of sports in their students.