Black Day to be observed in Punjab by teachers on Oct 5th

Lahore: The government schoolteachers in the province have announced to observe the World Teachers’ Day as “Black Day” on October 5^th, 2016 because of the ignorance of government towards the education sector, particularly when it came to providing relief to the teachers.

In a press statement issued on Thursday, the All Teachers Alliance Punjab (ATAP) which is a representative association for government sector school teachers stated that the Punjab government was intentionally neglecting teachers, as their statuses were still not being promoted in spite of the numerous promises of the education minister and of education secretary as well.

While talking to the media sources, president of ATAP Sufi Ramzan Inqalabi criticized that the Punjab government was planning to award national institutions to its favorites plus for this reason; schools were being handed over to some “blue-eyed” non-government organizations.

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Teachers of all government schools in Punjab had joined their hands and they will even sacrifice their lives to save the educational institutes from complete collapse, said Ramzan.

He observed that in Punjab, even policemen as well as clerks were being awarded promotion in their salaries and perks, but alas, teachers were not in the priority list of the government for this reason.

“It does not look like that the government wanted to promote teachers nor it wanted to take back the decision of handing over of government sector schools to Punjab Education Foundation (PEF),” he added.

He furthermore said that teachers have now understood the agenda of the government, which included deliberately restraining the performance government schools so that it could handover them to NGOs and their favorites after spending the public wealth.

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In the future, Ramzan said, after handing over these schools to various NGOs, heavy fees will be charged from poor residents, which will not only discourage the parents from sending their children to schools, but will also snatch the jobs of teachers.

“Our elders (teachers), who are retired now, kept boycotting for months, and were successful in getting their rights and I think that same is also the solution for the teachers of today,” said Ramzan.

ATAP president moreover said that the government wanted to get teachers back to past where they were forced to boycott the classes for their rights.

“We have decided to not to celebrate World Teacher’s Day instead of celebrating teachers day, this day will be observed as “Black Day” in public schools crosswise the province, whereas the teachers have been asked to wear black armbands in this respect,” he concluded.