Minister of State for Education , Tourism & Culture, Priya Sethi today visited Nowshera and took stock of arrangements put in place by the district administration for cross border firing affected families.Accompanied by MLA Nowshera, Ravinder Raina and senior officers of Police and civil administration, the Minister visited rehabilitation camps and interacted with affected people.Speaking on the occasion, the Minister said that government is well abreast of the problems and miseries of the border people.She directed district administration to strictly follow Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) not only in making necessary arrangements in relief camps but also in rescuing people in case of excessive cease fire violations.The Minister held a joint meeting with residents of border areas and district administration. She issued necessary instructions to administration for extending adequate and timely facilities to the people especially at this critical hour.
The Minister was appraised that five rehabilitation camps were setup for twelve effected villages and nearly 583 families comprising 2313 souls are residing in these camps including 668 males, 719 female and 926 children. The Minister stressed for close coordination among all concerned departments to ensure that people are provided all basic facilities in these camps.Keeping in view harsh climatic conditions, the PHE department was directed to provide uninterrupted drinking water supply , while PDD was directed to maintain power supply with some alternative arrangements in case of technical faults or breakdowns in these camp.The meeting was attended by Additional Deputy Commissioner, SSP besides other district officers and Executive Engineers of PDD and PHE .Later, the Minister held a separate meeting of Education Department which was attended by Chief Education Officer Rajouri, ZEOs ,DPEOs, Headmasters and cluster heads.The Minister reviewed in detail the zone wise performance in Education sector and showed great concern on low performance of schools . She directed the Chief Education Officer to evaluate the reasons for such bad performance. She called for sustained efforts to check absenteeism in schools specially at primary level.