Govt gets two more weeks to submit report on schools’ security

Karachi
The Sindh High Court on Monday took notice of the government’s failure to comply with its directives for conducting a survey of all schools from the point of view of their security, and told the chief secretary to submit a report within two weeks.
The court was hearing a petition filed by the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education Research and others seeking effective security of the educational institutions in the province.
On May 25 the high court had directed the government to submit a report after conducting a survey pinpointing which schools were more vulnerable to security threats and what safety measures had been adopted for their protection.
It directed the education secretary and other authorities concerned to examine whether the burden of such additional security was being passed on to the students, and furnish a report covering all such issues within four weeks.
The petitioners said that after the December 16 terror attack on Army Pubic School in Peshawar that killed over 130 students and staffers, the educational institutions across the country were under threat of similar attacks by banned organisations.
They said that as per intelligence reports published in the media, the welfare schools run by communities in Karachi were at high risk. They said some private institutions and schools had also complained of receiving threats.
They said Punjab, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the Islamabad Capital Territory had formulated standard operating procedures and directed the school administrations to adopt measures, including raising boundary walls, topped with razor wire, and installing CCTV cameras. However, they said, nothing had been done to promulgate such SOPs in Sindh, where the authorities had put the responsibility of educational institutions’ protection either on the school managements or on the parents.
A division bench headed by Justice Syed Hasan Azhar Rizvi observed that despite its issuing repeated directions no reply had been submitted by the chief secretary yet.
The court will resume hearing on August 7.
The petitioners submitted that the provincial government spent Rs220 million every month on the security of 600 VIPs, including the ministers and foreigners, but no concrete efforts were being made for the security of the schools and colleges in the province.
They said over 1,675 police personnel were deployed in the VIP Zone, whereas there was only one security official for every 6,000 citizens of the city, which had and estimated population of over 18 million.
The court was asked to direct the government to provide foolproof security to the educational institutions and declare that VIP security for politicians and ministers without reasonable classification was discriminatory and unlawful.