Dr Fazlullah Pechuho – File Photo

Sindh Education Secretary Dr Fazlullah Pechuho assured citizens on Tuesday that all education institutions with inadequate security measures would be closed down said that the motive of the cracker attack near schools in Karachi’s Gulshan-i-Iqbal area was to spread fear and panic.

Talking to Reporter, the provincial education secretary said that the government could not provide security to each and every educational institution but could only deploy Rangers and police personnel around these.

Cracker blasts outside private schools in Gulshan-i-Iqbal area on Tuesday morning triggered fear and panic among children and their parents amid much-hyped and recently devised detailed security arrangements in the aftermath of the Peshawar school attack.

Dr Fazlullah said that private and government-run institutes needed to implement security instructions and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) issued by the government. He added that teachers and their parents were equally responsible as well.

The education secretary said that the SOPs were not being fully implemented upon as some schools had put up close-circuit television (CCTV) cameras as a cosmetic measure and without any connections while untrained security personnel had been employed in some schools.

He said that if private educational institutions, which were earning profits from the fee they charged, also allocated an amount for children’s security, then that may prove helpful in providing a safe environment to the students.

Dr Fazlullah said that the agreement between the education department and private institutions had made it clear that private schools would be responsible for provision of security at their respective institutions. He added that the registration of institutions which are found violating the agreement would be cancelled.

He assured citizens that all such institutions whose security arrangements are found to be inadequate would be shut down and added that the decision of taking action against 15 such institutions was under review.

When asked about the course of action to be taken if private institutes demand any additional fee in the name of security, the provincial education secretary said that any complaint of such a nature should be submitted to the directorate of private schools.

Following the carnage at the Army Public School in Peshawar in Decmeber 2014, the government had extended winter vacations across the country by 11 days for security reasons.

The Sindh government had announced that only those schools would reopen for classes on Jan 12 where foolproof security arrangements had been made.