Sindh education dept makes Covid-19 vaccination mandatory

KARACHI: The Sindh Education and Literacy Department made the COVID-19 vaccination mandatory for parents, teachers, and students aged 16 years and they will be required to submit their vaccination certificates to the educational institutions.

The department in a steering committee meeting held Tuesday decided to reopen schools with 50 percent attendance on August 23. Addressing a press conference after the meeting, provincial Education Minister Sardar Shah said all the teachers should be 100 percent vaccinated.

He said the educational institutions will strictly follow COVID-19 SOPs. Only those schools of which teachers and staffers are 100 percent vaccinated would be allowed to operate. Sindh health department will launch a vaccination drive at schools, colleges, and varsities. The remaining teachers, students and staffers would be vaccinated.

“We have formed a three-member working committee to monitor curriculum, the orientation of the new academic session, academic schedule,” he added. “The first meeting of the committee would be convened Friday. The notification of Tuesday’s decisions would be issued on Saturday or Sunday. The minister said vaccination process in the rural areas was slow.

Therefore, the owners and administrators of private schools have been told to complete the vaccination of their staffers as soon as possible. However, the teachers of public schools due to the fear of salary blockage have completed their vaccination course. About the single national curriculum implementation, Shah said Prime Minister Imran Khan perhaps has not read the Constitution.

“We teach about our heroes in the textbooks. If our people want to read about Makhdoom Bilawal, Roplo Kolhi and Dodo Soomro at schools, why we won’t teach them about these heroes.

We teach Sindhi and why we should not teach. I wonder how Buzdar and Jam Kamal gave up their rights to others,” he added. He said his statement about teachers was misreported in media. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, dropout ratio has increased.