Teachers protest abolition of education projects

Sit-in to protest abolition of National Education Foundation, Basic Education Community Schools continues for 2nd day.

ISLAMABAD: Teachers in Islamabad continued a sit-in for the second day to protest against the “abolition” of National Education Foundation (NEF) and the Basic Education Community Schools (BECS) project.

A large number of teachers and students from BESC participated in the sit-in outside Parliament House.

The protestors claimed that the government had decided to end both projects from June 30.

They demanded that Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry take notice of the issue and demanded that the government continue with the project.

Both the federal government and provinces have not allocated any funds in their current budgets for the continuation of education bodies.

NEF was initially founded through a cabinet resolution in 1994 by the PPP government. It is now an autonomous statutory body as restructured under Presidential Ordinance 2002, extended to the tribal areas, Gilgit-Baltistan, Azad Jamu and Kashmir and Islamabad Capital Territory to promote education through public-private partnership.

The project has around 1,5000 Basic Education Community Schools in the country with more than 550,000 students belonging to the poorest of the families. Around 550 supervisory staff, 15,000 teachers and 500 field supervisors are serving in the project.