‘Desired enrolment impossible due to poverty’

Punjab Teachers’ Union says inflation has forced parents to pull their children out of schools

LAHORE: Schoolteachers of the province have showed their concern over the government’s target to achieve 100% enrolment and 95% attendance in schools, saying that the targets are impossible to achieve without eliminating poverty and other social ills.

Punjab Teachers’ Union (PTU) Central President Chaudhry Muhammad Sarfaraz, Syed Sajjad Akbar Kazmi, Secretary General Rana Liaquat Ali, Jam Sadiq and others in a joint statement said that achieving 100% enrolment in schools of Punjab was impossible without eliminating poverty and addressing the problems being faced by the teachers community.

“Increasing inflation and cost of living with the rise in poverty has forced parents to pull their children out of schools and children have to work to earn a living as a consequence. In such a situation, achieving the 100% enrolment target set by the government has become impossible. Similarly, ensuring 95% attendance is also not doable.”

On March 30, Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif inaugurated the school enrolment campaign for the year. The CM said, “We will complete the target of enrolling every child in Punjab into a school before the election to ensure that no child is denied the right of an education.”

The teachers’ collectively said that on the other hand, problems being faced by the teachers’ community were also not being solved by the government. They said, “The delays in fulfilling the promises made to the schoolteachers’ community, has created unrest among teachers. This behaviour of the government is tantamount to being anti-education.”

The teachers claimed that the ‘unwise’ policies and decision made in the last nine years had both economically and socially exploited the teachers’ community in the province. They alleged that every policy enforced by the government had failed. They demanded that the government review its policies and take all stakeholders on board before making new policies.

They said, “We demand that the chief minister, school education minister and the Punjab school education department secretary devise policies in consultation with teachers. Furthermore, we demand that the notification of upgradation of teachers should be issued as soon as possible and end the social and economic exploitation of the teachers’ community. In addition to this, the government should stop handing over public schools through Punjab Education Foundation (PEF).”

Earlier, the PTU had announced that it was forced to take to the streets to get their demands accepted. They announced that if the government did not upgrade teachers till August 15, as per the promises made to them by government functionaries, the community would stage protests on August 24 outside press clubs in every district of the province and on September 16, a sit-in would be staged in front of the Punjab Assembly in Lahore.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 18^th, 2017.