Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly Tuesday passed the much-awaited Private Schools Regulatory Authority Bill 2017 to register and regulate functioning of private sector schools in the province. The house also adopted the KP Medical Teaching Institutions (MTIs) Reforms (Amendment) Bill 2017 to authorise the provincial government for the replacement of non-performing members of the Board of Directors of medical teaching institutions.
The Private Schools Regulatory Authority Bill was moved by Provincial Minister for Elementary and Secondary Education Mohammad Atif Khan, while MTI Reforms (Amendment) Bill was presented by Minister for Health Shahram Khan Tarakai. The powers and functions of the Regulatory Authority would be to register and regulate schools and supervise their curricula scheme of studies, academic schedules, co-curricular activities and ensuring observance of vacations of summer, winter, spring and other holidays in schools as being observed by schools in public sector.
Moreover, the authority would formulate policies, guiding principles and criteria for the establishment and registration of School for supplementing public sector investment in education. It will devise and implement criteria for categorization of a school to ensure minimum standard of education and facilities in each category, sanction annual increase in fee in excess of up to 10 percent to be charged from students; provided that a school shall not increase fee more than once during an academic year.
The authority will constitute a District Scrutiny Committee from time to time in consultation with government. The house also passed Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Minerals Sector Governance (Amendment) Bill, 2017, and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Consumer Protection (Amendment) Bill, 2017.
Meanwhile, Speaker KP Assembly Asad Qaiser referred the question of the Sardar Aurangzeb Nalotha, parliamentary leader of PML-N to a special committee headed by him to investigate into corruption in a water supply scheme of his constituency. Sardar Aurangzeb Nalotha insisted that a huge amount of Rs 10 million had been wasted on the project. He requested the Speaker to constitute a committee headed under his own supervision to investigate the matter. He offered that in case of failure in proving the allegation, he will tender resignation from the membership of the house. The Speaker with the consent of parliamentary secretary Ayesha Naeem announced the referring of the matter to the special committee for the purpose.
In the meanwhile, the house rejected the referring of the question of Mufti Said Janan regarding irregularities in the recruitment of Class-IV employees in the office of the Assistant Director, Local Government and Rural Development (LG&RD), District Hangu.
The JUI-F legislator insisted that the reply of the department was incomplete and it had given details regarding the qualification, test, interviews and domicile of the applicants have been withheld by the department. Therefore, he said the question should be referred to the standing committee concerned for detail discussion. Speaker Asad Qaiser put the matter to vote and the house rejected with majority. Similarly, a question of Azam Khan Durrani regarding the collecting of car parking fee by Peshawar Development Authority (PDA) was also rejected by the house by majority vote of 33:20.
Meanwhile, replying a supplementary question of Sardar Hussain Babak regarding the construction of Bab-e-Peshawar Flyover at Phase-3 Square, Hayatabad said that National Logistic Cell (NLC) and Frontier Works Organisation (FWO) could be granted contracts of works without prior advertisement and competition.
Similarly, the Call Attention Notice of Mahmood Ahmad Khan of JUI-F regarding alleged corruption recruitment on different posts by Deputy Commissioner (DC) Tank was also referred to the concerned standing committee of the house while the Call Attention Notice of Mahmood Jan of PTI was disposed of after the assurance of the Provincial Minister for Information Technology (IT) for completion of the legal course in the regularisation of IT teachers and Lab Incharge in Elementary and Secondary Education. Speaker, Asad Qaiser later announced the prorogation of the proceedings of the house for indefinite period.
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