Massacre Effect: Female teachers get gun training in Pak

January 28, 2015 | 01:04 PM | 104 Views

Teachers in northwest Pakistan 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 Dec. 16 attack on an army-run school in Peshawar, the main town in Pakistan’s northwest. “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 for the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 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.

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