PESHAWAR: Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Pervez Khattak on Monday said 1,300 vacant posts at the higher education department would be filled with immediate effect.

Addressing the ceremony organised at the Archives Hall here to hand over vans to various boys and girls colleges of the province and give away scholarships to 315 MPhil and PhD students, the chief minister said his government was trying to make a comprehensive system to address problems ofeducationalinstitutions.

`We`re devising a system wherein teachers are not transferred and their promotions take place in keeping with the collective performance of schools and colleges. The carrot and stick policy will be enforced according to which hard work and good performance will get rewarded, whereas lethargy will draw punishment,` he said.

Khattak said every district of the province would have a university so that the people of far-flung areas could have access to higher education.

He said youths were a national asset and that their bright future could only be ensured by provision of quality education instead of establishment of multistoryed buildings or roads. The chief minister said his government was taking radical steps to end the obsolete class-based education system. `Without education, we could hardly make any meaningful progress,` he said.

Khattak said his government had brought meaningful changes in education and health sectors, while the police and patwar systems had been reformed. Later, he handed over keys of 50 vehicles to the administrations of various colleges for men and women from across the province and distributed Rs100 million scholarships to 315 MPhil and PhD students under the Faculty Development Programme.

The chief minister also announced the government would give 100 more vehicles to colleges in the province during the current financial year. Special assistant to the chief minister on higher education Mushtaq Ahmad Ghani and higher education secretary also spoke on the occasion.