PESHAWAR: The annual Secondary School Certificate examinations began across Khyber Pakhtunkhwa on Tuesday amid unscheduled power outages in several examination halls.

The boards of intermediate and secondary education in the province have registered 920,000 students for the exams, including 474,000for grade 9.

The board`s administration has established 1,600 examination centres and deployed 25,000 invigilation staff members.

For the first time, the government has stopped the students of private schools from taking examinations on their campuses and made arrangements for them in government schools and colleges to prevent cheating. However, these students were seen upset by power cuts.

`I saw students struggle to solve papers amid insufficient light at Government Superior Science College Peshawar,` a parent told Dawn.

A private school`s students, sitting the SSC exam in the Government High School Hazarkhwani, complained about a shortage of facilities through the exam.`It was Islamiat paper for 10th grade but students faced difficulty in solving it in the two-hour allocated time due to power suspension,` one of the parents said.

He added that the students suffered for two more hours as there were issues in online attendance as well.

An official of the education department confirmed power outages in examination centres and said power loadshedding was frequent in the province, so students sitting the SSC examinations suffered.

An official of the Peshawar Board of Intermediate andSecondary Education said the board chairman and provincial government had approached Pesco high-ups with a request to ensure smooth power supply to the areas where examination centres were set up.

A resident of the Gulshan Colony told Dawn that the unscheduled power cuts had dramatically increased over the last few days.

He said Pesco didn`t tell its consumers why it was resorting to unannounced loadshedding.

He wondered who would hold the power utility accountable.

The resident insisted that the duration of power outages hadmore than tripled in the last three days.

He said that the argument that load shedding was only happening in the areas where people do not pay bills is an outright lie as regular bill paying neighbourhoods have also been subjected to tortuous long hours power cuts.

According to the office of Peshawar commissioner, student attendance on the first day of SCC examinations was 96.4 per cent.

It added that the first paper was conducted in a peaceful and calm environment with transparency in all five dis-tricts under the administration of Peshawar education board.

`The delivery and return of examination materials was carried out efficiently and safely on the first day of the examination.

The commissioner`s office said Pesco officials had been contacted for uninterrupted supply of electricity during exams.

`Uninterrupted power supply will continue from 8am to 1pm on the remaining days of exams,` it claimed.

Administrative officers visited the examination centres established in their respective areas to ensure provision of facilities to the students and prevent cheating.

Peshawar commissioner Riaz Mehsud, who holds the additional charge as the chairman of the Peshawar education board, monitored the examination centres with the help of CCTV cameras at the offices of the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education Peshawar.

During supervision, he ordered action against a candidate for cheating in the Bara Darang area of Khyber tribal district and issued a final warning to the examination staff.

Also in the day, four people were arrested over violation of exam restrictions in Bannu district.

An official told Dawn that the district administration, following the government`s directives, had banned the presence of unauthorised persons in the proximity of examination centres.