Moalims

TIMERGARA / UPPER DIR:
The district education departments in both Upper and Lower Dir have received directives to discontinue the maktab schooling system and transfer its students to primary schools across Dir. While the departments have initiated action, residents have voiced reservations over the government’s rationale.
Elementary and Secondary Education Additional Secretary Qaisar Alam Khan said the government is in the process of setting up new schools and streamlining parallel education systems to increase efficiency within the sector.
Upper Dir DEO Jan Muhammad said as many as 82 maktab schools exist in the district. He said maktabs with less than 150 students will be merged into the nearest primary school, within six and eight kilometres in proximity, while those with 150-200 students will be closed and a new primary school will replace them.
Meanwhile, the Lower Dir education department has issued a notification to integrate 96 maktabs into primary schools. According to a department official, around 150 such schools were set up in the district 25 years ago to make up for the absence of primary schools.
“Around 10,000 students are enrolled with the under-equipped maktabs,” he added. Lower Dir DEO Hafiz Muhammad Ibrahim was not available for a comment despite multiple attempts.
Unimpressed
However, locals are unimpressed with the logic behind the merger. The closure of maktabs in Upper Dir’s remote areas like Khadam Payan, Phon Bizara and several other villages will deprive local children of the right to education. Not many parents are willing to send their children to primary schools, situated several kilometres away, where facilities are no better.
Khal Aman Jirga head Akhunzada Sikandar Hazrat said most of the maktabs were established in mosques.
“If the government cannot upgrade them it should not discontinue them for good,” he added.
He said if the government continues to go ahead with the decision, the locals will march to Chief Minister House in protest. “On the one hand they claim to have enforced an education emergency and on the other they are shutting schools down,” he added.
Back to school
In Lower Dir, when children happily returned to their maktabs after the summer break, they found the entrances padlocked and notices on the wall, saying the institution has been merged with the primary school nearby.
A department official in the district, on the condition of anonymity, said the decision is void of logic because the primary schools also lack basic facilities.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 5th, 2015.