Daily Times

Representatives of government decided on Thursday to go to any extent against the government to resist its move of transferring state land to a commercial firm for the construction of a private institution.

The CDA had allotted 21 kanal piece of land in sector F-11/2 for the setting up of a government school. The worth of the land is said to be over Rs20 billion. Now, the Ministry of Federal Education and Professional Training along with the Federal Directorate of Education (FDE) planned to hire a private firm for setting up an upscale school under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) mode.

The move, however, irked FDE’s staffers. Some representatives of FDE including teachers, non-teaching staffers and principals, working at different schools and colleges of fall under FDE, held a press conference at the aforementioned site (F-11/2). They strongly condemned the government’s handing over the land of public educational institutions to the private education sector and that they termed “one-to-one monkey distribution”. “If the government doesn’t step back from its decision, we will hold a strike and shut down all (423) educational institutions,” they warned and hinted that an option to approach court to intervene in the matter can be considered.

President Federal Government Teachers Association (FGTA) Malik Amir said on the occasion that this is sheer decimation which will “not be tolerated at any cost,” adding that these are the public entities and moreover public sector educational institutions are a source of getting education for the poor. “Poor children were supposed to get free education here at public sector educational institutions but the government plans to give these plots to private institutions for unknown reasons that said worse example bad-governance,” he regretted. It is the responsibility of the state to provide free education to children under Article 25A, but here the government is running away from this responsibility, he recalled.

Well informed sources said that Dr Ikram Ali Malik who was DG and Deputy DG Ali Ahmed Kharral expressed reservations over the planned move of the government. Both officials, however, were removed from their position immediately by the Prime Minister as per summary moved by the Education Ministry through Secretary Waseem Ajmal Chaudhry.

Education Minister Rana Muhammad Tanveer had said in a statement that he had taken notice of the issue and sought a report in this regard, adding that the removal of the DG and DDG had nothing to do with the said school project.

As per initial plan, it was proposed that the private firm will hand over the school to the FDE after 20 years. According to the proposal, the private firm will be allowed to charge 80 per cent students while 20 per cent students will be given free education”.

According to the secretary Chaudhry, the entire process was transparent and after a competitive process the Ministry wanted to engage the private sector in education which was the reason behind the planned construction of the private school on government’s land under the build-operate-transfer basis.