3,239 KP schools issued notices over inadequate security

PESHAWAR: The police inspected 4058 educational institutions in the provincial capital under the National Action Plan and issued notices to 3239 others for inadequate security, an official told The News.
The Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Police have been directed to inspect the security arrangements in and around public and private sector educational institutions to avoid Army Public School-like attack in future.Special committees of the representatives of police, district administration and Education Department have been constituted to visit schools, colleges and universities in their areas.
“The police have inspected 1280 educational institutions in the limits of city, 1080 in cantonment and 1698 schools, colleges and universities in the rural areas. Over 1200 of these institutions in city, 967 in cantonment and 974 in rural areas were issued notices to improve security,” Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP), Operations Peshawar, Mian Saeed Ahmad told The News.
The KP Police bosses had ordered to appoint additional station house officers in all the urban police stations for inspection of schools.Schools management were also directed to enhance security on their own to avoid any APS-like attack. As many as 150 people, including 135 kids, were killed in the worst attack in the history of the country on APS onDecember 16 last year.
Thousands of schools have raised the height of their boundary walls and others erected barbed wires on the directives of the policemen. Majority of the public and private sector schools, however, have failed to adopt standard security measures as directed by the government following the APS attack.
There were still hundreds of schools, almost all the in the public sector in remote districts that don’t have boundary walls and are more prone to attacks.Apart from buildings, thousands of buses and vans transporting millions of children from and to schools are more vulnerable for having no security arrangements.
Several buses and vans carrying schoolchildren were attacked in the past years. The provincial government has announced to allow teachers in the public and private sector schools to carry guns for security.
Eight women teachers of a government college were imparted one-day training in weapon handling at the Malik Saad Shaheed Police Lines as part of improving their self-defence skills. The decision had to be taken back after it was widely criticised for having negative impact on education of millions of kids all over the province.
The government had to issue directives not to train other female teachers since it earned widespread criticism. The training of female teachers, however, continued in some of the tribal areas as well as parts of the Sindh province.