Punjab Chief Minister Muhammad Shahbaz Sharif recently took notice of a report about government school students being forced to labour in fields by the school headmaster.
Sharif ordered a detailed inquiry and has demanded a report in this regard from Gujranwala Division Commissioner Saeed Wahla within the next 24 hours.
Sialkot executive district officer (EDO- Education) Riaz Ahmed Sohi told reporters that the Government Boys Eelementary School Ismailkay- Satrah headmaster Mushtaq Ahmed had been suspended for forcing school children from grade 1-5 to toil in the fields of a local land lord. “An initial inquiry revealed that the landlord was a relative of Ahmed and that he had been forcing elementary school children to work in his fields so that he would not have to pay for labourers,” said Sohi. The EDO said that a strict departmental probe had been ordered against the suspended head master as well as the teaching staff in the school.
“It is even more surprising that we received no complaints in this regard by teachers or other staff. This had been going on for weeks until parents of the students realized what was going on,” he said.
“The headmaster had given us strict instructions to keep quiet on the issue or we would be fired. Even the children had been threatened with caning if they told their parents,” said administrator for the school Javed Kaleem.
On May 11, 2011, residents in the area informed the press about the incident after they saw dozens of school children laboring in a field in the Ismailkey village in their school uniforms. “The girls were handling the wheat crops and making piles while several boys were cutting the crop by hand,” said Satrah resident Umer.
“My daughter didn’t tell me what was happening at first but eventually she told me that she hadn’t been going to school but rather to a field for the past week.
They weren’t studying and they left their bags in the classroom to work in the fields,” said Humera’s, 8, mother Naseem Bibi.
“We send our children to school to study not to be exploited by the administration and the feudal. These people need to be punished,” said parent Rahman Saleem.
Several second graders told reporters that their teachers forced them to obey the administration and they would spend their days in the field before being back in time to collect their bags and return home with their parents.
The students and some of their teachers were loaded into trolley and were taken to wheat fields located a few kilometers away from the school.
Students from grades one to six were made to work in the fields and they collected the wheat and bundled it for procurement.
Published in The Express Tribune, May 15th, 2011.
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