PESHAWAR, Jan 27 (AFP): Teachers in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province are being given firearms training and will be allowed to take guns into the classroom in a bid to strengthen security following a Taliban massacre at a school last month.
Heavily armed militants killed 150 people, 132 of them children, in a bloody December 16 attack on an army-run school in Peshawar, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa’s capital city.
“Carrying firearms for every teacher is not obligatory, but all those who want to carry firearms to schools willingly will be provided with permits,” Atif Khan, provincial education minister of KP said on Tuesday.
Provincial Information Minister Mushtaq Ghani confirmed the decision, adding that the province was unable to provide police guards for all of its government-run education institutions.
“The number of police in the province is not enough to guard 35,000 schools, colleges and universities — that’s why we have allowed teachers to carry firearms,” Ghani said.
Authorities began training teachers in how to use guns last week and the latest batch of female trainees started learning the ropes on Tuesday.
“It’s a two-day course. We are training them on gun handling and also on [the] procedure of using it,” said Mohammad Latif, a trainer at police headquarters in Peshawar.
Pakistan has already strengthened security for schools across the country, including by building elevated boundary walls with steel wire fencing and increasing the number of police. Private schools have been ordered to deploy extra security guards.
A teacher loads a magazine into a pistol during a weapons training session for school, college and university teachers at a police training centre in Peshawar on January 27, 2015.
Malik Khalid Khan, the president of the Private Schools Teachers Association, opposed the move to arm teachers.
“How is it possible to teach students in a class … holding a gun in one hand and a pen in another?” Khan said.
“It’s not our job; our job is to teach them books. A teacher holding a gun in the class will have very negative effect on his students,” Khan said, adding that the government should hire more police if they are short of numbers.
The government and military promised a tough response to the Peshawar massacre, in which heavily armed militants scaled the school walls before going room-to-room mowing down helpless students and staff.
A six-year moratorium on the death penalty was ended for terror cases after the attack, and parliament voted to set up military courts to try terror offences.–Courtesy: dawn.com]]>
The weapons in the hand of teacher doesn’t mean that teacher take a gun in one hand and pen in other to go to class. It means the institution having an emergency weapons to engage the terrorist attack in educational institute for 10 to 15 minutes until the the security forces reached. Its a problem with a nation to take any new initiate in negative sense. To use a gun by any Muslim either a teacher or student or get training of use of gun is a ‘sunnah’. Its not shocking and terrifying situation at least for me. If a teacher can teach to use a pen than the same teacher also teach how to use gun at tough situation.
Though we are getting rid of Taliban but now the govt is trying to prepare a new force which can replace Taliban. we should have such system that doesn’t allow these thing but instead of promoting peace and harmony our law makers make the society more complicated. We need education form teachers rather being shooted, my appeal to all plz think for a moment what the students get from the teachers now.
my goodness the very idea to give teachers arms terrorize me. Are you going to teach the innocent students book or gun handling. what impact this will leave on the little kids. besides, it is a security hazard. if a gun goes off in the hands of a woman teachers accidentally, what would be the consequences. for god’s sake please don’t rush to take such bizarre decision. a research is needed to assess the impact of these terror accidents on the children and how to deal with the issue.