February 26, 2008	Tuesday	Safar 18, 1429

MIRPURKHAS, Feb 25: A social welfare organisation has criticised a teacher for physically punishing a student in Sinjhoro taluka in Sanghar district.

In a joint statement issued here on Monday, the project coordinator of the Society for the Protection of the Rights of the Child in Umerkot district, Abdullah Khoso, and deputy coordinator Mohammad Bux Kumbhar, condemned the awarding of corporal punishment to a nine-year-old student Ayaz Ali Mangrio at the Govt Primary School in Gul Hassan Sirewal by a teacher, Nazar Mohammad Sirewal.

They said that the teacher had ordered three other students to bring the student, who had absented himself from the school, to school. The students sent by the teacher had tortured the student while they were bringing him to school.

They said that SPARC’s campaign had resulted in prohibition of corporal punishment in government schools in the Frontier province since December 2003, in the Punjab since September 2005 and also in Sindh.—Correspondent