Counting on support: Students of Delhi School still stuck in a limbo

SHC’s order for the school to be denationalised was endorsed by SC in 2007 .

KARACHI:

Whether the Sindh government will hand over the Delhi School for Boys and Girls to a private body or reclaim it in the wake of the ongoing controversy has yet to be decided. Both Pakistan Peoples Party and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement, however, have offered their full support to the school in opposing denationalisation.

On Thursday, PPP’s senior minister, Nisar Ahmed Khuhro, who is likely to assume the education minister portfolio, had promised the school management to visit the institution located in Karimabad. The minister failed to show up even though hundreds of students had gathered, claimed Aneesur Rehman, the convener of the Taleem Bachao Action Committee - a private body maintaining surveillance over the education department.



The school’s management committee’s chairperson, Shaikh Ayaz, while talking to The Express Tribune, said that Khuhro had assured of his full support against denationalisation of the school. “Around 1,000 students had gathered at the school’s playground along with their parents and teachers but faced disappointment when Khuhro did not arrive.”

Meanwhile, Shakeel Memon, the spokesperson for the PPP senior minister, when contacted said that the visit to the school was in the senior minister’s schedule but was deferred to a later date since Khuhro had yet to assume the education minister portfolio.

MQM’s elected representative, Khalid Bin Wilayat, however, reached the school to raise the dampened spirits of its students and reiterated his party’s support for the sake of ‘saving the future of students’. “If the government fails to clear its stance over denationalisation of the school, MQM will raise this issue in the provincial assembly,” said Wilayat.

The school established by the Delhi Anglo-Arabic College and School’s Old Boys Association in 1964 was handed over to the government in 1972 under former Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s policy of nationalisation.

Protests sparked after a meeting on May 17 between the president of the School’s Old Boys Association, Bashir Ahmed Khan, and the education department’s secretary, Fazlullah Pechuho, to discuss the denationalisation of the institution as ordered by the Sindh High Court.

Over 3,000 students are currently enrolled in the school’s morning and evening shifts. A majority of the students from low-income families are enrolled in the school as it offers education free of cost.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 14^th, 2013.