Primary school teachers beat minor with sticks

7-year-old punished for not giving fee that helped teachers pay for ‘substitutes’.

RAJANPUR:

Two public school teachers tortured a first grade student until she fainted on Monday.

According to locals in Rajanpur, two female teachers at a government girls’ school  beat up a first grader because she had failed to pay the Rs50 that the teachers had been extorting from the students. According to the child’s parents, the teachers were charging a fee of Rs50 from each student on a monthly basis. “We had been paying the sum until recently when we discovered that the teachers were extorting our children to pay off their replacements,” the victim’s father Javed said.

A group of students parents gathered to protest the treatment of the first grader, Momina, 7, who had been beaten with a stick by her teachers Sajida and Rukhsana when she did not bring Rs50. “The teachers had hired two women to teach in their place and were still taking a government salary,” said an administrator at the school. “This has been going on for weeks. They don’t teach and they seldom even come into work. I am assigned to claim the money from the students and they pay off two women to come to the school,” the administrator said.

He said that Sajida and Rukhsana came to work on Monday, specifically to punish students who had not paid the Rs50 which they used to pay the salaries of their replacements.

“The women they chose to replace them don’t teach. They merely sit on a chair and knit or embroider cloth while the girls keep sitting free all day,” said a parent, Shumaila. “We cannot allow this to continue. They are extorting money from seven and eight year olds and shirking their duties,” she said.

Seven-year-old Momina said that Sajida and Rukhsana had beaten her with sticks for not paying up. “I don’t study at school. The teacher always tells us to stay quiet and keep sitting. We sit and whisper to each other for hours,” Momina said.

Students and parents protested against the teachers beating Momina and said they would approach the police and register a case against the two women. “These women have been at this school for over three years and they haven’t taught more than five classes in that time,” said a source at the school.

The parents said that they would take the matter to the district officer and said the administration should reprimand the teachers and hire replacements for them immediately.

Published in The Express Tribune, April 12^th, 2011.