Funds allocated for Waziristan education projects insufficient: KP opposition

Peshawar [Pakistan], July 20 (ANI): Following the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa government's allocation of Rs 100 million for establishing a university in North Waziristan tribal district against its actual cost of Rs 4 billion, member of the opposition Pakistan Peoples' Party, Nighat Yasmin Orakzai complained that tribal districts do not have higher educational institutions.
"The estimated cost of the university proposed for North Waziristan tribal district was Rs 4 billion but the government had allocated just Rs 100 million funds, which were insufficient," she stated during the question hour in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly on Tuesday.
The KP government has also allocated an insufficient amount of Rs 50 million for the construction of the education city in the adjacent South Waziristan tribal district while the total cost of the project was over Rs 2 billion, Dawn reported.
Orakzai also complained that the provincial government had allocated only Rs 50 million for the proposed education city in South Waziristan while she urged the government to establish universities, and colleges in the erstwhile FATA to bring the region to an equivalent level to other areas of the country.
In response to Orakzai, the higher education minister Kamran Khan Bangash said the provincial government has planned an education city on over 2,700 kanals of land in the South Waziristan district and the project would comprise schools, colleges, and campuses of the country's different universities. The Education City will be established in the Barwand area at the estimated cost of Rs 2.5 billion, he said, informing further that the establishment of a campus of the Khyber Medical College, Peshawar had been proposed for the Bakakhel area, which was a buffer zone between North Waziristan and Bannu districts, reported Dawn.
Moreover, the house also admitted an adjournment motion regarding the murder of three minor girls in Peshawar and the overall law and order situation in the provincial capital as three girls have been killed in Peshawar during the last couple of days.
Labour minister Shaukat Ali Yousafzai told the house that the police had completed the profiling of 149 people in the murder of minor girl Mahnoor and said samples of 48 suspects had been sent to the laboratory in the case and that the police would soon arrest the culprits. (ANI)