Peshawar, Most of the government colleges in Peshawar and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have been facing shortage of classroom furniture, forcing some of their students to stand or share a chair with a classmate that has been hampering their education and creating a challenge for teachers to maintain discipline during their lectures.

In Khyber PakhtunKhwa about 90% of public sector schools are having shortage of furniture. Due to this shortage students have to share their chairs with other students and so they can’t concentrate to the lectures. Teachers are also in trouble because of less discipline in classrooms.

Superior Science College Peshawar students told that often when there are more students in the class then we have to share our chairs with the students and remaining students stand in the back of classroom.

Students are also unable to write down their lectures while standing and due to this many students don’t like to attend the lectures.

Students were telling that this problem increases in the lectures of English, Islamiat, Pak studies and Urdu because the number of students gets doubled in these lectures.

A Professor told The Dawn that he has seen two students sharing the chair and standing in a back row due to the shortage of furniture. More he said that it is impossible for students to grow up their abilities in such environment. Continuing, he said that it is also impossible to maintain the discipline when two students are sharing one chair and remaining stands on the back.

The situation becomes more miserable in the examinations when students have to sit on the floor to solve their papers. Facing this issue several MPA’s raised their voice in assembly for missing furniture, on which the speaker Kiramatullah Chagharmatti said that girl students were avoiding to take admission in newly opened colleges due to lack of furniture.

24.2 million rupees are announced by the provincial government for the Annual Development plan for 2011, 2012. But this amount is to much less for 150 colleges. A professor was telling that “Around 60 chairs can be procured for each college when the allocated amount is divided among the existing colleges,”

When this question was asked to Prof Ghulam Qasim who is the director of Higher Education, he confirmed that shortage of furniture in new colleges is because department is not able to provide furniture to new colleges soon. He told that Pak-Garman furniture factory is sole supplier of all Govt. departments and due to overload the factory is unable to provide furniture.