Private school owners, teachers protest against government

Claim govt has not paid monthly fee for students enrolled in partner institutions

LAHORE: Private school owners, under the Punjab Education Foundation (PEF), threatened to shut down all partner institutes in the province, stating the government has not paid the monthly fee of students enrolled at their institutions.

On Monday, PEF partner school owners and teachers held a protest outside the Lahore Press Club against the foundation’s administration.

The protesters claimed that for the past two months, the administration has not paid the tuition for students studying in these partner schools. They added the institutions have been unable to pay their teachers as a result. Our staff worked throughout Ramazan without pay; they were not even paid on Eidul Fitr, they maintained.

In addition to this, protesters also criticised the PEF administration for appointing retired army officers as monitoring heads.



“These officials have zero experience when dealing with teachers and with running a school,” said Maqsood Ahmed, a school owner.

They also accused the monitoring teams of harassing and humiliating staff, apart from imposing hefty fines on minor violations. There is no mechanism in place to challenge the fines imposed by the teams. The authorities continue to humiliate school owners, Ahmed lamented.

Further, the monthly fee paid by PEF has not been increased in the past three years. It has become difficult for us to meet our needs since the prices of everyday commodities continue to soar, they expressed. The PEF administration developed standard operating procedures (SOPs) for this purpose.

The SOPs were meant to improve the quality of education and monitoring. However, most sections defined under the SOPs were not feasible and modified the structure of their partnerships with PEF. The administration is not implementing all the sections of the partnership, forcing us to protest, the demonstrators added.

They vowed to continue their struggle against the administration and announced another protest outside the PEF office in Lahore.

The protesters also appealed to the Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar and Punjab Caretaker Chief Minister Hasan Askari Rizvi to take notice of the situation and direct the PEF administration to release the funds.

When contacted, PEF Mnaging Director Tariq Mehmood said that the fee vouchers were delayed due to the fiscal year ending. “The partner schools will soon receive the funds,” he maintained.

On the allegations against the monitoring teams, PEF MD stated that there was evidence of malpractice as all the teams had to have their observations signed by school owners during their visits. “As for the fines that had been imposed, PEF has a review system in place where owners can raise their concerns,” he concluded.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 26^th, 2018.