PESHAWAR: Over 250 government schools, mainly primary, have been illegally occupied for the last over two decades by different people across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, it is learnt.

Of these schools, 38 are completely occupied and 215 partially, according to official documents available with Dawn. The occupation of so many schools is astonishing in a situation when senior officials of the Elementary and Secondary Education (E&SE) Department are scratching their heads over how to meet the schools` requirements, according to sources in the education depart-ment. They said that the department currently needed thousands of schools, mostly primary, so as to enrol the out of schools children.

A senior official of the education department said that in most of the cases of occupation the owners had donated land for the schools on the condition that they or their immediate relatives would be given jobs in the same schools. The jobs include peon, watchman and in rare cases that of a teacher.

He said that the owners had occupied the buildings when their demand for jobs was not met. He said that the education department did not have the property documents of the fully occupied schools.

In the partially occupied schools, the occupants, including peons and watchmen, have been residing in a portion of the respective schools, sources said.

Of the 38 completely occupied schools, six are in Bannu; five in Shangla; four each in Swabi and Mardan; three each in Swat, Peshawar, Nowshera, Hangu and Tank; andone each in Abbottabad, Charsadda, Upper Dir, Kohistan and Mansehra.

Similarly, the partially occupied schools include 37 in Bannu; 20 in Peshawar; 15 in Swat; 13 each in Mansehra and Dera Ismail Khan; 12 in Charsadda; 11 in Lakki Marwat; 10 each in Abbottabad and Mardan; nine each in Nowshera and Upper Dir; seven in Haripur; six each in Shangla, Kohat and Chitral; five each in Buner and Tank; three in Kohistan; and two in Battagram.

Currently, the education department is not allowing construction of new schools on donated land without transfer of the land to the education department, a senior official of the education department told Dawn. `It is very easy to occupy the government`s building as no one challenges the occupants for their wrong act, he said.

When contacted, E&SE Department director Rafiq Khattak said that the occupied schools were not constructed on the feasibility report of the education department.`These schools are constructed by the senators and MNAs and under different schemes of the federal government,` Mr Khattak said, adding that the provincial education department was not taken into confidence at the time of construction of such schools.

According to the procedure followed for construction of new schools, the education department first visits the proposed site for preparing the feasibility report, he said. Mr Khattak said that after construction of the schools the provincial communication and works department handed them over to the education department.

After that the education department appoints the teachers and other staff for the new schools to make them functional, he said.

However, this procedure was not adopted for the construction of the occupied schools, he added.

He said that the department had started proper work to end the occupation of schools and make them functional.