PESHAWAR, Nov 9: Two sisters from Balakot, a town badly hit by last month’s quake, started a temporary school at a relief centre for earthquake survivors in Hayatabad to help children of school-going age to spend a normal life.

Shabnam Naz, 21 and her younger sister Yasmeen took the initiative and opened the school in a room for children with the permission of the administration of the relief centre run by the social welfare department.

Some 38 children aged between five to 15 attended the first day at the temporary school on Tuesday.

Shabnam, having an intermediate certificate, was teaching at a private school in Balakot and her sister Yasmeen, a student of third year, also started teaching with the help of two other girls at the centre.

“We need books and other stationery to start proper classes so that children could get busy with normal routine life,” Ms Yasmeen said.

“We started the school because we were very tense and terrifying moments of that Oct 8 still haunt us. I think the school will keep us all busy,” she said.

Yasmeen and Shabnam’s family lost 48 members of her extended family. They lost their houses and businesses in the quake.

“We had to live and sleep under the open sky in cold without food for five days as our family did not know how to beg for food and shelter and we had no money,” Yasmeen said.

Shabnam said that it was not only her home and family business but even her future was destroyed due to the earthquake. “Now I want things to be normal and start teaching again,” Shabnam said.

I have made a start by opening a school consisting one room, she said.