Sedhr Hrms: On IMF demand, Schools in Punjab are being privatized

Punjab (Sedhr hrms)

The process of privatization of 18,000 government schools of Punjab is going on under the demand of the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Government of Punjab is completing the current privatization plan in three phases.

In the first phase, Government of Punjab handed over around 18,000 schools to various NGOs and private owners i.e. capitalists.

Similarly, government has released the lists of schools that have been privatized in the second and third phases.

After handover the schools to the owners that were privatized in the first phase, the second and third phase schools will be handed over to their owners.

The government initiated a series of transfers to facilitate the privatization process, allowing teachers after decades to transfer themselves without the condition of Student Teacher Ratio (STR).

After completion of the conversion process, the government of Punjab will add vacant schools to the privatization list again.

Prior to this, Punjab government implemented the policy of promotion of primary school teachers that had been stalled for many years. The purpose was to advance the process of privatization of primary schools and to reduce the number of teachers in primary schools so that these schools could be offered for privatization.

In the past, government considered the schools having less number of students for privatization. but this time the government is selling the schools which have a good number of children but less number of teachers.

Instead of making new recruitments on existing vacancies created after promotion, this time it was decided to privatize schools that had one or two teachers.

Schools offered for privatization include schools that were performing very well in all respects. Everything from the number of children to the quality of education was good. But after the promotion of the existing teachers, fewer teachers were left behind, and these schools were handed over to private owners.

Now, along with the privatization of primary schools, the way is being paved for the privatization of middle schools as well. For this, first of all, the heads of middle schools are being immediately transferred to high schools and thus the schools will be brought up to the privatization criteria through exchange and then their lists will also be released.

Similarly, the golden handshake package for teachers is being proposed to forcibly send teachers of government schools to homes.

The recent privatization attacks are being carried out to meet the conditions of the IMF loan and after the approval of the seven billion dollar loan from the IMF, the economic attacks on the workers will intensify.

Apart from schools, many other public institutions are also under the attack of privatization. The workers of these institutions can be brought together and a common fight can be waged. The current puppet government is the weakest government in Pakistan’s history and is completely dependent on military crutches.