PESHAWAR, Aug 7: The Islami Jamiat Tulaba on Wednesday held a protest demonstration at the Peshawar University campus against the government’s policy to privatize the educational institutions of the country.

The demonstrators holding placards inscribed with anti- government slogans marched through various roads of the city and later gathered near campus where the IJT’s campus Nazim Waqas Ahmad Khan delivered a speech in which he bitterly criticized the government’s policy aimed at selling out the educational institutes of the country.

The country, he said, already lagged behind in education than other developing countries and the privatization of the existing infrastructure would prove disastrous. Education, Mr Khan said was the only way to achieve progress and prosperity but the government was bent upon to do away with the institutions meant for imparting education.

The ongoing process launched by the government to privatize the educational outlets in the country would deprive many deserving students from higher studies. He said the government wanted to convert these learning centres to money minting machines.

It is ridiculous on the part of the government that on one hand it was making claims to provide free education to the country and on the other it was playing havoc with the educational institutions, said Mr Khan, adding that the IJT would never allow a free hand to the government to privatize these institutions on the directives of the IMF and the World Bank.