Affordable schooling: Parents protest 140% raise in fees

Lock school gate, call for withdrawal of raise, give school administration till Monday to do so.

BAHAWALPUR:

Parents of many students at the Sadiq Public School protested for the second day on Thursday against up to 140 per cent increase in the monthly fee.

They had earlier also staged a protest at the Fawara Chowk on Wednesday.

The protesting parents gathered in front of the school and chanted slogans against the governor and the school principal.

Some of the protesters put a lock on the school gate and refused to let anyone in. They said they would not open the gates until the fee raise was withdrawal.

Some of them had also brought their children along.  Some Anjuman-i-Tajraan (traders’ association) members also joined the protest.

The protesters said that the politicians’ claims of concerned about the people of the region and provision of better opportunities were all a “drama”.

They also condemned Governor Makhdoom Ahmad Mehmood for his “pretentious concern” for the students of Bahawalpur.

They said the 140 per cent increase in the fees meant that the government did not want children to get better education.

They demanded that the fee raise be withdrawn. They said they would continue to protest burn the governor’s and the school principal’s effigies next if they did not listen to them.

The monthly fee for Montessori to grade 5 has been increased to Rs15,600 from 6,500; for grade 6 to grade 8 to Rs16,800 from Rs7,000 and that of A Level to Rs40,800 from Rs17,000.

They said that school administration had misled the Board of Governors into believing that the fees had not been raised for several years. They said that the school had been raising the fees by 15-20 per cent every year.

The parents and children held placard with anti-government and anti-school slogans. One such banner read: Son of this soil Makhdoom Ahmed Mehmood has betrayed its people by the cruel decision. Another read ‘Education for all’. Mehmood Yousaf, father of one of students, said that Nawab of Bahawalpur had built the school to end class discrimination, “but the school had now been taken over by a mafia”.

Waqas Akram, another protester, said that more than 70 per cent of the parents would no longer be able to send their children to the school with the raised fees.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2013.