PESHAWAR, Oct 24: The NWFP government was ready to start tent schools in the quake-hit areas next week if required items were provided to it immediately, officials of the education department said.
“The NWFP government demanded about 5,000 tents and the schools will be started as soon as we get the tents,” Mr Shafiullah, the special education secretary told Dawn here on Monday.
The provincial government had yet to receive tents for the schools, but there was a chance that the federal government had sent tents directly to the effected districts, Mr Shafiullah said.
The public sector schools in the quake-hit districts were closed after the quake, as many buildings were collapsed and others were not safe due to continuing aftershocks in these areas.
The federal government has announced recently to restart schools in tents in the effected areas to avoid wastage of time in the current academic session.
Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz on Sunday said that federal government had dispatched about 250 tents each with the capacity of 50 children to restart schools.
The government had made a plan to make these tent schools focal point for those families whose members, including school-going children, had gone missing during the quake, Mr Shafiullah said. They would help rehabilite school-going children and create awareness among them, Mr Shafiullah said.
He said these higher, higher secondary and primary tent schools would be set up in the open. Ten tents would be provided per higher and higher secondary schools.
Four tents will cover a middle school and three tents per primary school will be provided.
The number of teachers in each tent will depend upon the availability of teachers, as there is still no data available of the teachers killed in the quake.
Only 70 teachers could be confirmed as dead in Mansehra in the Oct 8 quake, wihle those killed in other districts was still not known, Mr Sahfiullah said.
The NWFP government has made purchases of over Rs300 million. Each tent school will have floor-sitting arrangement to accommodate all students. It will have a blackboard, jute-made mates and teacher’s chair and a desk.
Earlier, Maulana Fazli Ali, the provincial education minister, had said that some 8,000-school buildings in public and private sectors were either partially damaged or completely collapsed in the entire NWFP by the quake.
Mohammad Tariq, the deputy secretary schools and literacy department, informed that in Abbottabad district, 91 schools out of 1,827; 252 out of 1,006 in Kohistan; 1,100 out of 2,479 in Mansehra; 517 out of 737 in Battagram and 199 out of 655 schools were reported damaged in the quake.
However, the provincial government with the help of the donor agencies have hired consultants team equipped with Geographical Information System (GIS) to conduct a survey in the five quake-hit districts and collect data within two or three weeks, Mr Tariq informed.
Education department officials acknowledged that many school buildings even in cities like Peshawar were in bad condition. Some had developed cracks, but the heads of the schools and EDOs were just told to remain alert, as other arrangements were not possible due to lack of resources.
Many public sector schools were established in either old buildings or new buildings having no quake resistant quality.