HUNDREDS of teachers under the banner of the Grand Teachers Alliance (GTA) Punjab staged a massive protest and sit-in outside the Civil Secretariat on Thursday, demanding reversal of various ‘controversial’ policies introduced by the Punjab Government. Teachers from across the province rallied to express concerns at the government’s failure to implement agreements made with them in the past.
Teachers are rightly perceived as builders of the nation but regrettably their legitimate grievances are not being listened to sympathetically by the authorities concerned. The root cause of the unrest among teachers in Punjab is the decision of the provincial government to hand over thirteen thousand schools to the private sector/NGOs. Protestors argue that the move will negatively impact education quality and job security. They also complain that the government is not doing enough to support educators and that the constant changes to the education system are pushing it towards a collapse. It is a matter of concern that all this is happening in a province which earned a good reputation for its widely hailed measures aimed at promoting education and inducting teachers purely on merit. The policies pursued by both Shehbaz Sharif and Ch Pervez Ilahi during their tenure as Chief Ministers of the province attracted qualified people to the teaching profession and standard/quality of education in the public sector institutions improved to a satisfactory level. In this backdrop, the new policy of handing over a bulk of these institutions to the private sector is nothing but a retrogressive measure that might inflict irreparable harm to the education sector. Barring a few private sector schools, the majority of them are just minting money in the name of teaching and they have no commitment to the profession. They hire unqualified and untrained teachers at shamefully low salaries and therefore, what guarantee the government has to ensure the privatized schools will not meet the same fate. There is substance in allegations that the move is unlikely to produce anything good, rather it could lead to sheer wastage of funds, resources and precious premises.
