PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Minister for Elementary and Secondary Education Mohammad Atif Khan has directed the department to demolish the buildings of 300 dilapidated schools to start reconstruction work on them with immediate effect.

He also directed the reconstruction of 120 earthquakeaffected schools, upgradation of100 Maktab (mosque) schools into regular schools and acceleration of the pace of work on provision of permanent buildings for 100 schools established in rented buildings.

He issued these directives while presiding over a review meeting of education department here on Wednesday. Beside others, secretary education Shehzad Bangash and special secretary education Qaiser Alam were also present.

The meeting was briefed about provision of furniture to public sector schools, sports facilities, girls cadet college Mardan, establishment of IT labs, conditional grant, establishment of play areas in primary schools, construction of sports grounds, standardisation of 400 schools project and early age programming project, and took several crucial decisions in that regard.

The elementary and secondary education officials informed the meeting that so far a sum of Rs4 billion had been released for provision of furniture to public sector schools, having enrolment of 1.2 million children. Out of that amount, Rs3 billion has been spent during the current year, while out of 10,000 primary schools, play areas have been established in 7,791 schools. The officials maintained that an amount of Rs350 million had already been released for establishment of the facility in the remaining schools which will complete during the current year.

The meeting was informed that 57 sports grounds would be complete by the end of the current month, while out of 72 schools 42 were ready under standardisation project and they would be inaugurated shortly. APP