PESHAWAR, June 27: Teachers of different communal schools of Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) have expressed concern over continued closure of over 214 schools for boys and girls, urging Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Masood Kausar to order their reopening to save future of thousands of students in the tribal region.

Leading a group of teachers at a press conference in Peshawar Press Club on Wednesday, Shah Hakim from North Waziristan Agency said that over 742 communal schools of total 956 had been made functional after a series of protest demonstrations by the teachers and parents during 2011, but 214 schools were still closed.

He said that owing to closure of these over 200 schools about 5,000 tribal students had been deprived of education facilities in different tribal regions. Referring to difficulties of teachers, he said that most of them had served for 10 to 12 years in these schools, but the government had terminated their services in 2010.

Some of the teachers, he said, had been reinstated from Oct 1, 2011 but their services were yet to be regularised. He said that the teachers were reinstated on fixed salaries and their seniority abolished for unknown reasons.

Mr Hakim said that these teachers had played a vital role in promotion of education in the tribal area under the communal education programme. He said that the schools were opened in 1998 and since then around 84,000 tribal students had taken benefit from the facilities.

He said that about 1,912 teachers were serving under this education system in the Fata with a maximum wage of Rs13,500.

A summary has already been prepared to regularise services of communal teachers, but no practical step is taken to execute the plan, he said. The teachers demanded of the federal and provincial governments to regularise their services.