DERA GHAZI KHAN, Nov 23: The primary school for girls at Gaddai has been without classrooms and other most basic necessities an institution must have, not to speak of facilities.

The school, which has been running for the last 60 years, is among hundreds of state-run educational facilities that lack proper buildings and have failed to find place in the school rehabilitation project.

The rented building has only veranda and no rooms and toilets, and according to a teacher, the school staff has to pay the monthly rent.

Sources told Dawn that more than 40 per cent of the 2,100 schools in the district were shelterless; in tribal area tehsil of Dera Ghazi Khan there are 388 schools most of which have been closed down.

EDO (Education) Faiz Muhammad Khosa told Dawn that there was a need to devise a comprehensive policy to activate the dormant institutions. cotton farmers: Scarcity of water for irrigation and high prices of inputs like fertilisers have hit hard the per-acre yield of cotton which no one is willing to procure at the government rate, inflicting loss on farmers in the district.

According to the figures available with the agriculture department, the cotton sowing target was 273,320 acres and cultivation was carried out on 281,910 acres but despite excessive coverage the yield was affected.

A farmer, Elahi Bakhsh told Dawn that per-acre cotton yield had been reduced from 25 maunds to 15 maunds due to pest attack, costly inputs like pesticides, fertilisers, etc., and scarcity of irrigation water.

He said nobody was ready to procure raw cotton at the government rate of Rs1,800 per maund.

A ginner told Dawn that “we can’t store the cotton as loadshedding has hampered the functioning of ginning factories”.