PESHAWAR: The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government has established parent-teacher councils (PTCs) at 3,700 government schools of the newly-merged districts to utilise around Rs4 billion funds through them for providing missing facilities there.

In this connection, the provincial government has launched a programme to train 11,000 members of the PTCs, including 7,500 members from the seven merged districts and 3,500 from the erstwhile Frontier Regions.

The PTC is a school-based body consisting of parents of the enrolled students,localinfiuential residents and administration of the school.

It executes civil worl(s like con-struction of additional classrooms, boundary wall, lavatory, electrification, purchase of furniture, classroom consumables and laboratory equipment and providing drinking water.

The establishment of PTCs and training of their members is a joint venture of the provincial government and German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ).

Through the PTCs, the provincial government would spend around Rs4 billion on repairs of 775 schools, provision of drinlcing water in 2,393 schools and construction of lavatories in 2,205 schools, boundary walls in 944 schools and additional classrooms in 1,535 schools across the merged districts.

The PTCs` formation had started in September last year which completed by end of February, programme manager of the PTC project at the Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar, Mohammad Haseeb Khan told Dawn.

He said that the training of trainers of the first batch of PTCs`members completed on Sunday who would train other members in their respective areas.

`Once training of the PTCs is completed they would start spending money on providing missing facilities in schools of the merged districts and erstwhile Frontier Regions,` he said.

In the first batch, the trainers were trained from four merged districts, including Mohmand, Bajaur, Khyber and Oral(zai. The four-day training was arranged at the Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar. Rest of the trainers would also be trained in the IMS in different phases.

The provincial government has already released Rs700 million to the accounts of PTCs and after its utilisation the rest of the amount would be released. Each PTC can utilise up to Rs3 million funds on providing missing facilities.

Senior technical adviser education from GIZ, Fayyaz Ali Khan, said that the GIZ provided technical assistance to prepare district education plans in merged areas, support the education depart-ment in monitoring of projects under the accelerated implementation programme and training of PTCs.

Ms Izat Bibi, head teacher of the Government Girls Middle School, Tani, Mamond tehsil, told Dawn that after their training she had established the PTC at her school with the support of parents of the students.

`There is no electricity and drinking water in our school since long,` she said, adding the PTC of her school would provide these two facilities on priority basis.

With the provision of basic facilities, she said, enrolment would be increased in the merged districts.

Abdul Manan, a teacher and PTC member at Government High School Khar No-1, Bajaur, said that his school was short of furniture while the roof of school building needed repair.

He said that with the PTCs establishment the teachers and parents had now become independent in taking decisions, which would bring improvement in infrastructure of the schools.