Jawad Khan (15), spends most of his day at home in his village in the remote Battagram District of Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa Province (KP), sometimes glancing at a magazine, or occasionally helping his mother shell peas or cut up potatoes. His three younger siblings spend their day in school, and Jawad, a top student in his grade till a year ago, assists them with revision and homework. He has himself refused to go to school for over a year, as the new private school set up in the area lacks a ramp to accommodate his wheelchair.
Jawad lost both legs after he was trapped for over two hours under the rubble of his public school during the devastating earthquake of 2005, which killed at least 73,000 people in parts of KP (then known as the North West Frontier Province) and Pakistan-administered Kashmir. That school is still to be built, and Jawad says he “feels too embarrassed” to be carried into his classroom. To add to his problems, his wheelchair, donated soon after his legs were amputated when he was nine, has also virtually fallen apart. “My family cannot afford a new one,” he says.
According to the UN Children’s Fund (Unicef), the 2005 quake left 23,000 children disabled. Unicef itself is building “child friendly” schools across the quake zone, complete with facilities for the disabled, and last year opened 16 more such schools. “At the child friendly schools Unicef is building, we try to mainstream disabled children. Ramps are provided when needed, but issues like access to schools for children in remote areas are huge ones,” Jan Madad, an education specialist at Unicef, told IRIN.
But the 165 schools Unicef has agreed to build cannot cater to the needs of all the quake-affected children. According to the Earthquake Relief and Rehabilitation Authority, set up by the government immediately after the quake, 5,751 educational institutions damaged or destroyed by the quake need to be reconstructed. Some 73 percent had been completed by the start of September 2011. Work continues on others, but this still means many children lack access to school.
The problems for physically challenged children are acute. “I have a nine-year-old pupil, Gul Muhammad, who is carried to school on his father’s back. His friends help him to the toilet, and the hard chairs are uncomfortable for him as he has a back problem. I feel sorry to see him and wish our school had better facilities,” says Alimuddin Ali, a school teacher in Battagram.
“I have read of education by radio in some areas of the world for children in remote communities. Perhaps we can use FM radio to offer them broadcast lessons,” he suggests.
(Excerpted and adapted from www.irinnews.org)