RAWALPINDI: Despite Punjab government’s claims of improvements in educational facilities, thousands of students in Rawalpindi district are deprived of even the basic necessities at their institutions.

According to the information collected by Dawn, there are at least 240 schools in the district where thousands of students are forced to get education under natural light because these schools are deprived of electricity connections.

Meanwhile, there are 95 schools in the district where children have no access to clean drinking water and 37 schools lack toilet facility.

Majority of these schools are primary-level and are situated in the rural parts of the district.

A teacher of an electricity-deprived school said unavailability of electricity creates problems for students during rainy and foggy days.

The data revealed that most of the neglected schools are situated in NA-50, a constituency of Federal Petroleum Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi.

There are 160 schools in this constituency that are deprived of power connections, 40 schools have no clean drinking water and 34 schools have no toilets for students.

The constituency of Mr Abbasi comprising Murree, Kotli Sattian, Kallar Syedan and Kahuta, has been a stronghold of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) since a long time.

240 schools without electricity, 95 without potable water, no toilets in 37 institutions

Sources in the education department said that the School Education Department Lahore is well aware of these missing facilities and efforts were being made to provide these facilities to the schools.

A senior official of the education department Rawalpindi’s budget wing told Dawn, “Recently, the government released the budget for provision of some missing facilities in these schools, so hopefully we will start various projects to mitigate the suffering of students in the next few months.”

“Without improving the infrastructure, we cannot compete with private institutions and we can’t provide quality education. The government should pay heed towards this issue,” said Qazi Imran, a schoolteacher. He further said that it is unfortunate that hundreds of schools are lacking these basic facilities.

Abandoned school buildings

According to the official data, there are 32 school buildings in the district that are lying abandoned since many years.

Sources said earlier there were schools in these buildings, which, due to low quality education, could not maintain their strength. Resultantly, the department had to close them.

Sources said the government of Punjab’s Literacy and Non-Formal Basic Education Department recently approached the education department for taking control of these buildings to set up adult literacy centres.

“Currently, talks are underway between the two departments regarding abandoned buildings,” said a senior officer of the education department.

Despite repeated attempts, EDO Education Rawalpindi Qazi Zahoorul Haq could not be contacted.

Published in Dawn, August 28th, 2014