Students’ rage: Pindi education board office charred in fire of fury

Records completely safe, RBISE spokesperson says.

RAWALPINDI: The offices of Rawalpindi board were charred in a fire of rage on Thursday. More than a thousand angry students, waiting for their results for the last four months, assembled in front of the Rawalpindi Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education (RBISE), ransacked it, and set it on fire.

“They entered the offices at around 1:30pm and asked us to leave. They were carrying batons and petrol bombs,” said inter-branch office assistant Arshad Mehmood. About 35 people in the building were allowed to leave.

The students then ransacked the office, took records, and set fire to the office. The enraged students also damaged sign boards as they moved towards the main Sixth Road Chowk, completely cutting off the traffic. They also attacked the fire brigade truck and broke its windows as it struggled to make its way to the board office, witnesses said, adding that the entire chowk “looked like a battleground”.

The intermediate students burnt the ransacked records and gathered around, shouting against the board. An angry student said they had had enough, that their results were being continuously delayed, even though the Punjab chief minister had told the board to announce the results within 45 days in April.

“My future is at stake here,’’ said another student at the protest.

The police kept mum throughout the entire two-hour episode, witnesses said. It was only towards the end that they resorted to firing in the air and teargas to disperse the mob.

A police official said that they had arrested 15 rioting students; however some people alleged that some of those taken into custody arrived later in the evening and were not even part of the original protest.

Records safe

RBISE spokesperson Arsalam Cheema said that all records of the board (from 1978, when the board was formed, to 2011) are safe, as they are kept in a separate office. He added that the examination papers of the students were also safe. However, he said that admission forms, library forms and certificates of the students were destroyed.

He added that the offices of the board chairperson, staff members, inter-branch were charred in the riot, while board secretary’s office, spokesperson office and a library were partially damaged.

He promised the board would announce the results by December 24. “I don’t understand why they took this extreme step when we had said we will announce the result on December 24.”

He said most of the students were from private colleges that they had identified and that they will lodge a complaint against them “soon”.

Bad news in the offing

A board official asking not to be named said they had found about 105,000 mistakes during the rechecking process. Consequently, about 20,000 students who had passed originally will now be failed. The pass percentage will fall from 49% to about 20-21%, the official said, adding that this was the reason behind the delay in the results announcement. “The results were ready in November but we held back the announcement due to the fear of a backlash,” the official said.

*with additional reporting by Qaiser Shirazi

 

Published in The Express Tribune, December 16^th, 2011