Parents, students perturbed as schools demand fees amid lockdown

ABBOTTABAD: Large queues of parents and students were witnessed in front of different commercial banks for depositing school fees here on Monday as most of the private as well as semi-government educational institutions asked the students for depositing school fees before April 10.

Most of the educational institutions in the city have sent routine school fees to students either via web portal or asked them to collect their fee slips for the month of April from school premises.

Interestingly, some of the schools have asked the students for depositing school fee for two months. Despite lockdown in the city and non-availability of public transport, parents as well as students rushed to the schools and colleges. Most of the parents expressed concern after seeing the monthly fee slips in which no concession was offered as expected by them.

Later, they faced hardship in depositing their fees in their respective commercial banks for hours. Long queues were seen in most of the banks where parents and students waited for turns to deposit monthly school fee. A number of parents failed to deposit the school fee during banking hours due to the opening of limited branches of commercial banks. Parents and students demanded the government to immediately issue the fee reduction notice just like the government of Punjab, which announced 20 per cent reduction in the fee.

In KP, a large number of private and even government English medium schools have asked the parents to deposit at least two to three months’ fees with no concession. Keeping in view the ongoing scenario, parents demanded the government to provide 30 per cent fee concession and remaining fee to be paid by the students in easy installments as due to complete lockdown, hundreds of thousands of people are now penniless and cannot afford to buy even their daily food and edibles and are also facing hardship to pay off their other obligations. They demanded early action in the fee concession to save the parents from further mental torture.