KP teachers stage protest against possible privatisation of colleges

PESHAWAR: The teachers on Thursday staged protests in all the divisional headquarters to press the government to review its decision of forming Boards of Governors for the government colleges.

The government has already decided to grant degree awarding status to eight major colleges in the province and make the rest of colleges as constituent bodies for the degree-awarding institutes. The government has announced to start the process from the historic Jahanzeb College Saidu Sharif, Swat.

Once implemented in the Jehanzeb Colleges, the process would be extended to the remaining institutions. The degree awarding status would make the colleges autonomous bodies like the universities, which would be run by a board of governors.

The college teachers launched a protest drive against the government decision on the call of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa College Professors and Lecturers Association last week. They staged a token strike in their respective colleges and attended their duties while wearing black ribbons around their arms for two days.

When they got no response from the government, they staged a class boycott for two days. When the government still remained unmoved, they gave a call for protest demonstrations across the province against the decision.

In the provincial metropolis, a big demonstration was staged outside Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Assembly. The protesting teachers were holding banners and placards inscribed with slogans like “No to BoG and No to Colleges’ Privatisation.”

The speakers on the occasion blasted the government for what they called the anti-education policies. They said that the government wanted to privatise the government colleges in the name of the degree awarding status and the board of governors. This would bring very serious repercussions for both teachers and students, they said.

The BoGs, if implemented, would prove detrimental to the colleges on the pattern of the MTIs in the hospitals, they said. In Mardan, the teachers of Government Post Graduate College Mardan staged a protest demonstration under the leadership of Prof Husnur Rahman. The teachers chanted slogans and were holding placards and banners against the new system.

Talking to The News, Husnur Rahman said that the decision was aimed at privatisation of the colleges, which would affect teachers and students simultaneously. The teachers would lose their status of civil servants, while on students the burden of fee would enhance, he said.

He explained that the government wanted to make the colleges autonomous institutions like the universities. “You see the financial status of the universities in the province. If the colleges are made autonomous, their fate would not be different from the universities,” he argued.