Seminar flays KP govt’s failure to improve education sector

PESHAWAR: Participants at a seminar on Thursday criticised the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) government’s failure to improve the education sector in the province despite making tall claims.

The seminar titled”An analysis of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Education Budget” was organised by AlifAilaan, a non-governmental organisation. The seminar was attended by a good number of current and former parliamentarians, district government representatives, and people from the civil society. Interestingly, no-one from the Education Department attended the moot.

Even the chief guest of the event and provincial Finance Minister Muzaffar Said stated in his concluding remarks that it would have been better had the education minister and representatives of the Education Department attended the event.

Muzaffar Said admitted that a lot was needed to be done to promote education in the province. The minister said that though the provincial government had taken certain steps to promote education, they were not sufficient to enrol all the out-of-school children and provide them facilities at schools. He said they also needed to focus attention on the standard of education and character building of students.

District Nazim of MardanHimayatullahMayar, who also attended the seminar, challenged the representatives from the provincial government to show him just one new school built in the entire province since 2013. Even the projects initiated in the previous government could not be completed, he added.