KOHAT: The parents here have demanded of the management of private schools, who only allow their own printed copies, to arrange stationery as soon as possible, as students are spending whole leisure time at schools these days.

They said that since the start of semester last month the schools had not provided copies and notebooks to the students. They said that the students were not allowed to buy them from bazaar.

When contacted, Sajid Khan, a representative of Private Schools Association, admitted that education had become a business and aside from copies many schools fined the students who bought uniform from outside.

`We advise them to refrain fromsuch illegal practice, but they do not understand,` he said.

A stationer, Khurshid, said that his community had also stopped selling books and asked the private schools` administration to also arrange them like the notebooks.

Meanwhile, the parents irked by the late arrivaloftheirchildren ataround 3:00pm after the schools` closing time at 1:30pm demanded of the administration to devise a traffic plan so that school vans could cross different junctions easily.

Theyalsosaidthatduetoabsence of traffic officials on the bypasses and congested city roads hundreds of vehicles got stuck and the children reached their homes after hours of delay.

SEED PROGRAMME: The district council`s standing committee on agriculture on Tuesday termed suspension of the Insaf Food Security Programme a direct attack on the livelihood of the poor farmers and demanded its restoration. Under the programme wheat seed was given to the farmers on subsidised rates.

In this connection, the committeechairman, Shah Raza, district councillors and representatives of model farm services centre called on district agriculture officer Zahirullah at his of fice here and apprised him of their concerns about the decision of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government to stop the programme.

They said that the government had started the programme for three years till 2018 and released Rs1.2 billion for the first year. They said that the abrupt suspension of the programme would create problems for the farmers.

Mr Zahirullah Shah told the delegation that the programme had been wound up because the government had no money for it for the next two years. However, he said that the quality wheat seed was available at the agriculture extension wing and it could be obtained for Rs2,250 per 50kg bag.

He admitted that the difference between the cost of the seed under the IFSP of Rs500 per bag and the new rate was huge, but the government had no choice.