Teachers’ protest from 31st

LAHORE

After the United Teachers Council (UTC), the Grand Teachers Alliance, Punjab (GTAP) has also announced launching a protest campaign against, what they believe, anti-education and anti-teachers policies of the government.

The campaign will begin from protest outside press clubs of each district of the province from October 31. The announcement was made after the GTAP’s executive committee meeting held at Nasser Bagh on Sunday. The meeting presided over by the alliance’s chairman Muhammad Zafar Jameel was attended by representatives of different teachers associations. 

The meeting passed a number of resolutions and expressed strong concern over the government’s 'indifferent' attitude towards schoolteachers and observed that time had come to take to the streets as the government was not listening to teachers’ genuine concerns. A message of peaceful protest, the teachers later also formed a human chain outside the Nasser Bagh and outside the Punjab Assembly to express their resentment. It is pertinent to mention here that schoolteachers in Punjab have been protesting over privatisation of schools as under its Public School Support Programme (PSSP), the government has been handing over its schools to private sector. The other concerns of protesting teachers are related to upgradation of teaching posts and, what they call, victimisation of teachers by severe actions such as removal from service and other penalties.

monitoring: Punjab Planning and Development Department is closely monitoring all the development projects and also giving special consideration at the highest level to the projects where international development partners are involved. According to a P&D Department, at a review meeting held here, Asian Development Bank (ADB) showed satisfaction on the progress of all the development projects and declared all the projects “on track” in their Country Portfolio Review document. All the agriculture, natural resources and rural development related projects in Punja would be completed in time.