RAWALPINDI: A group of teachers’ groups has called for a province-wide protest movement to begin today against the turning over of 13,000 government schools to non-government organizations (NGOs). They say this is an attempt to privatize public education.
To lead the protests and sit-ins, leaders from the Punjab Teachers Union, the Punjab Educators Association, and the SS Teachers Association have come together to form a joint action group.
As a sign of protest, teachers will go to work on Monday (today) while wearing black bands on their arms. The joint action committee will release an action plan for the protest movement at the same time that the education department asks NGOs, famous people, and educated young people to apply to take over the schools by June 5. The goal is to finish the sale process by June 30.
Teachers’ union leaders Muhammad Shafiq Bhalwalia and Malik Amjad are worried that privatising schools will lead to the commercialization of school property worth billions of rupees. This will cause child fees to go up, the number of kids who don’t go to school to rise from 205 million to 300 million, and the education system to fall apart. They said that what the government did was the same as denying children a basic right.
They also think that the number of teachers and other staff will go down because the government only wants to keep 10,000 schools under its control.
The groups of teachers have said that the government broke a promise that Chief Minister Maryam Nawaz made before she took office: she would not privatise schools. They want the outsourcing plan to be cancelled right away because they are worried about how it will affect education and the safety of teachers and students.
A lot of people were against the move after the previous acting government pushed through the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf Government’s plan to privatise schools in stages.
When the Pakistan Muslim League Nawaz took power, they said they would stop the process, but they broke their word.
