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Dir`s special children school short of staff

2015-07-15
TIMERGARA: Three physically challenged siblings on Tuesday demanded of the social welfare department to provide the required facilities, including staff, to the deaf and dumb children school in Timergara.

While communicating through their father after a brief protest outside the press club here, the hearing and speech impaired children, Hassan Khan, sister Summaya, 13, and brother Faisal, 10, told journalists that the school badly needed facilities and staff to enable the physically challenged children to receive education.

`I passed my 6th class examination in March 2015, but I along with 14 other children was denied admission to the school owing to lack of staff and facilities,` Hassan Khan said.

He said they were denied admission in grade 7 as the school was up to the sixth grade. He said he along with other affected children had been raising voice about the matter for last three months. `I met politicians, held demonstrations, but failed to draw the attention of high ups,` he regretted.

The school is run in a three-room rented building on its third floor in congested Timergara city, making it difficult for physically handicapped students to reach it easily.

Hassan`s father Amir Zad Gul, also a social activist, told Dawn on contact the school was once located in an spacious area, offering grade 7 and 8 classes but it was shifted to the building without any reason. He said officers of social welfare department and district administration assured him of resolving the problem, but to no avail.

Zad Gul said minister for finance Muzafar Syed had also failed to realise his promise of upgrading the school.

He said Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government had declared education emergency and was claiming to provide quality education to every child in the province but it was least bothered to upgrade the school for deaf and dumb.

An official of the local social welfare and women development department said the school established in 1986 had not been upgraded.Correspondent