PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government lags behind other provinces and the federal capital to enact law on provision of free and compulsory education to students up to the secondary level.

After the 18th constitutional amendment it was binding on the provincial governments to make legislation for provision of free and compulsory education up to secondary level.

Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and the federal capital have already enacted the required law through the respective assemblies about free and compulsory education to the children, while the Palcistan Tehreek-iInsaf-led provincial government, lil
Article 25A of the Constitution, inserted through the 18th Constitutional Amendment Act, says that the state shall provide free and compulsory education to all children of the age of five to 16 years in a manner that may be determined by law.

Currently, about three million children are out of school in the province and working as child labourers in different sectors.

`The elementary and secondary education department has sent the proposed bill to the provincial law department for vetting time and again, but consensus couldn`t be developed between the two departments,` a senior official in the education department told Dawn.

He said that there were some complications regarding the proposed minor penalty to the parents under the law for not sending their children to schools.

Such complications should be sorted out before sending the proposed bill to the cabinet meeting, he suggested.

When contacted, Minister for Elementary and Secondary Education Mohammad Atif Khan said that work on the proposed bill was in progress since long. `We will pass the law regarding free and compulsory education soon,` he said.

The law department has certain reservations about some clauses of the proposed bill which would be addressed with the consultation of the education department, he said.

Asked how the law would be implemented for the children in the areas where there was no government school, the minister said that the of ficials of education and law departments had put their heads together to solve such issues. He said that it was easy to pass the law from the provincial assembly, but its implementation could be difficult.

Soon after the passage of 18th amendment, the education department in the previous Awami National Partyled provincial government had tabled a proposed bill in 2010 before the provincial cabinet regarding free and compulsory education for approval.

The cabinet had formed a committee under additional chief secretary for further deliberation on the proposed bill. Secretaries of the establishment finance and E&SE departments were members of the committee.

However, the proposed bill couldn`t be tabled in the assembly to make it a law when the government came to know that Rs138 billion were required for implementation of free and compulsory education law.