May 31, 2007	Thursday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 14, 1428

ISLAMABAD, May 30: Teachers belonging to the NWFP on Wednesday held a hunger strike camp at the Aabpara Chowk on the call of the Pakistan Teachers United Front (PTUF).

Scores of teachers and office-bearers of the teachers’ association observed token hunger strike and chanting slogans highlighting their demands.

Talking to journalists, PTUF NWFP president and senior vice- chairman Muzammil Khan Turabi said they were fighting this war for the last four years to seek their rights.

Earlier, on the assurance of former federal education minister Zobaida Jalal, National Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain and the prime minister we had had ended our protest, he added.

About the ongoing protest movement, he said it was launched on February 12 and teachers at 115 district headquarters protested for the resolution of their problems. Similarly, protest demonstrations and meetings were also held at the provincial headquarters before this hunger strike camp, he added.

Muzammil Khan said that a meeting was also held with Federal Minister for Education Javed Ashraf Qazi, additional secretary education and other officials, who termed these issues realistic but stated that the minister was helpless and could do nothing in this regard. “We have decided that all the central leaders at provincial level would observe hunger strike unto death from June 1, if our demands are not met,” he said.—PPI

A reporter from Rawalpindi adds: Professors and lecturers have backed the ongoing struggle of schoolteachers and condemned the allegedly false cases registered against the teachers for creating problems in the recently postponed primary level examinations.

According to a press release issued here on Wednesday by the Punjab Professors and Lecturers Association (PPLA) Rawalpindi Division, in a protest meeting held at the Gordon College, the PPLA president said the teachers implicated in the false cases remained present in their respective schools.