PESHAWAR: The elementary and secondary education department has asked the internally displaced persons, taking shelter in the buildings of the government schools, to vacate the schools till August 10 as academic activities would resume from September 1, according to sources.The students would start coming to their schools from September 1 at the end of three-month summer vacations, said an official in the district education office Bannu. However, he said that the deadline set for the IDPs to vacate the schools was August 20.

The IDPs claimed that they were asked to vacate the school buildings till August 10. Besides other incentives, the federal government would provide the IDPs with Rs12,000 per month for food and rent charges.

The news about vacation of schools has worried the IDPs as they are not sure to get proper shelter after leaving the school buildings because the host cities including Bannu, Lakki Marwat and Karak have not enough houses for rent to accommodate them, according to officials and IDPs.

Mohammad Khalil, a displaced tribesman, told Dawn that IDPs were panicked when they were told to leave the school buildings. Many displaced families would likely to shift to other big cities of the country to take houses on rent, he said.

Announcement of deadline panics displaced families

Mr Khalil, whose family is residing in a school in Bannu, said that he had been searching for a house to rent it for the last few days but couldn’t find any empty house for his family.

The IDPs have taken shelter in the buildings of 1,400 government schools after displacement from their native towns in North Waziristan Agency with the launching of military operation Zarb-i-Azb.

Of the 1400 schools, around 90 were in Bannu and rest of them in Karak and Lakki Marwat, officials in the education department said.

Quoting a recently conducted survey, they said that of the total families taken refuge in the schools, 600 wanted to reside with their relatives in Bannu and other cities, 520 in rented houses and 425 families wanted to shift to the camps established by the government for them.

However, officials said that students of the 189 under-enrolment primary schools, particularly girl schools, had to be shifted to other adjacent schools to accommodate IDPs in the building of their schools.

Similarly, IDPs would also be asked to shift to the buildings of 50 more schools, which were closed since long owing to absence of teachers.

The officials said that 30 more schools, which were in the final stage of construction, would also house the IDPs.

After vacating the schools, the communication and works department would launch a survey to assess the damage caused to the schools during the stay of IDPs. Definitely, the children of IDPs and their cattle might have caused minor damage to the school buildings, officials said.

They said that after completion of the assessment, the government would provide the required funds for the repair of the school buildings.

Published in Dawn, August 6th, 2014