ISLAMABAD: After complaints by parents, the Directorate of Special Education on 16th January took urgent steps to restart the transport service from 17th January for the Special Education Centre for Hearing and Speech Impairments located at H-9/4.
The transport service remained suspended since January 9 due to lack of funds, leaving students unable to attend classes.
There are over 550 special students in the centre and out of them 437 had been using the transport facility.
“We have resolved the issue on urgent basis and refilled the fuel tanks of the entire fleet of nine buses and other staff vehicles on Thursday evening.
“The transport service will run permanently from Friday,” said Joint Secretary Education Asif Bhatti, who is holding the additional charge of the director general (DG) special education.
“There were transport issues in some other centres which we resolved recently but due to various reasons the issue of this centre faced the delay of a few days, which too has now been resolved,” he said, adding the ministry of education had also arranged a Rs40 million additional budget for the special education directorate.
“We are also going to start a meal progamme in these centres as special children require special attentions,” he said, adding that he had also conveyed a meeting of parents on Friday to get their feedback to make the organisation more effective.
Meanwhile, the management of Special Education Centre for Hearing and
Speech Impairments through text and WhatsApp messages informed parents that transport service was going to restart on Friday.
The Parent-Teacher Association (PTA) on Wednesday met at the centre with President Sardar Iftikhar Khan in the chair.
They had urged the minister for education and the secretary to resolve the transport issue to ensure that students could resume their education.
The meeting also highlighted a severe shortage of teaching staff at the centre with positions vacant for the last 15 years.
The DG said a PC-I was being prepared for renovation work while three new centres would also be set up.
“We will provide whatever is needed in these centres,” he said.
The Directorate of Special Education was part of the human rights ministry and was last year transferred to the ministry of education with a budget allocation of Rs726 million.
Recently, the issue of the shortage of funds was also taken up on the floor of National Assembly and subsequently the education ministry, according to the DG, arranged a Rs40 million additional fund to bridge the gap.
Published in Dawn, January 17th, 2025
