September 26, 2008	Friday	Ramazan 25, 1429

KARACHI, Sept 25: The Sindh Professors and Lecturers Association (SPLA) has strongly condemned the handing over of two prominent colleges — the Begum Ra’ana Liaquat Ali Khan College of Home Economics and the Khatoon-i-Pakistan Govt College — to a non-governmental organization, the Zindagi Trust.

Terming the Sindh government’s decision “part of a plan to sell educational institutions”, the SPLA announced that college teachers across the city would observe a boycott of classes on Monday to express their resentment over the plan. It urged the authorities concerned to revoke the decision, and warned that a Sindh-wide movement would be launched if the demand was not met.

The SPLA also announced that teaching and non-teaching activities at both the colleges would remain suspended on Friday in protest. Teachers and students of the two colleges would hold a demonstration on Saturday morning, they said. Speaking at a joint news conference at the BRLAK College of Home Economics, president of the SPLA, Karachi chapter, Prof Ather Hussain Mirza, Prof Iftikhar Azmi, Prof Asif Raza Zaidi and Prof Muzaffar Rizvi said that the association had pinned great hopes on the present democratic government after the end of a dictatorial rule in the country.

“We expected that the democratic set up will help resolve the teaching community’s lingering issues,” they said, adding: “However, the problems, in fact, multiplied after the government’s recent actions.”

By issuing the notification of the transfer of these colleges’ management to the NGO, the Sindh government had deviated from the policies of its founder chairman, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, they remarked.

The late Bhutto had opened the doors of all private educational institutions to the poor and the low-income group people by nationalising them in 1972, they recalled.

Expressing their shock and dismay over the provincial government’s move, the SPLA leaders also recalled that when the process of denationalisation of educational institutions had been started during the tenure of Gen Ziaul Haq, and when the pace of these institutions’ denationalisation was expedited during Gen Pervez Musharraf’s rule in 2001, the SPLA had launched a vigorous campaign against all such moves.

It was during the same movement that certain prominent leaders of the Pakistan People’s Party, including the incumbent Sindh Assembly Speaker Nisar Ahmed Khuhro and Taj Haider, had not only condemned the process, but had also assured the stakeholders that the PPP would stop the denationalization of educational institutions once it came to power, they said.

They said that the PPP leaders had also promised that the denationalised educational institutions would be nationalized again if it came to power.

The SPLA leaders urged the president, prime minister, Sindh governor, chief minister, education minister and chief secretary to intervene and withdraw the fresh notification immediately.

Meanwhile, the SPLA has convened a meeting on October 9 to chalk out a future line of action with regard to the decision to hand over the two colleges to the NGO.