Private schools seek lockdown bail-out

Representatives say parents cannot pay four months’ fee when the session resumes in June

ISLAMABAD: With the federal government shutting down schools across the country for two months until June 1, private schools urged that they should also be included in the economic bail-out package announced by Prime Minister Imran Khan.

National Association of Private Schools Pakistan (NAPS) Senior Vice President Zahid Bashir Dar on Friday said that while the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic poses serious a threat to human lives and they support the measures proposed by the government, the lockdown to prevent its spread has endangered the future of private educational institutions in the country.

Dar said it was disappointing that the government had failed to include private educational institutions in its economic package.

“Without the government’s help, the Covid-19 monster will devour thousands of small private schools,” he said, remaindering that some two million people work as teachers in the 173,110 private educational institutions across the country who also require support amid the prolonged lockdown.

Dar said that the educational institutions which have been closed are unable to collect fees. When these school and colleges reopen in June, parents will be unable to pay them four months of fees in one go apart from purchasing course books, bags and uniforms for new classes.

In this situation, the private schools will not be in a position to pay their teachers.

Moreover, he said that many small schools operate in rented premises and they cannot hope to retain their buildings over the course of the lockdown unless they are accommodated in the economic package.

Dar further said that in the history of the country, whenever the nation was in need, students, teachers and owners of private educational institutions had stepped forward to help wholeheartedly, whether it was the disaster of the 2005 earthquake or the 2010 floods.

Today, he said, these private educational institutions are looking towards Prime Minister Imran Khan with the hope that they will not be forgotten in this time of great difficulty. He said that with the government attention hundreds of schools and thousands of teachers can be saved from shutting down and being unemployed. 

Published in The Express Tribune, March 28^th, 2020.