September 28, 2008	Sunday	Ramazan 27, 1429

KARACHI, Sept 27: There will be a complete strike in all colleges of the city on Monday to put pressure on the government to take back the notification of handing over of two colleges to an non-governmental organisation, Sindh Professors and Lecturers Association President Professor Athar Hussain Mirza said on Saturday.

Teachers observed a strike in Khatoon-i-Pakistan Government College and Rana Liaquat Ali Khan Government College of Home Economics on Saturday in protest against the government’s decision of handing over the colleges’ management to a private owner.

In 2001, the government had come up with a plan of handing over 40 colleges to private owners with certain terms and conditions, he said.

However, he added, the teachers did not accept the programme and started resisting it. They were locked up for their resistance and were beaten on streets, he recalled.

He said the programme would ultimately affect middle-class students who were not in a position to bear the expenditures of privatised education institutions.

For privatisation, the government had cited the reason that it did not have enough funds to run colleges and that was why it was handing over the colleges, he said. However, the decision was taken back due to our resistance and efforts, he said.

Later the government privatised three colleges, namely St Joseph’s, St Patrick’s (morning) and St Patrick’s (evening), he said.

He said the teachers filed a petition against the privatisation of those three colleges in the high court but no hearing took place and the case was still pending in the court.

On Sept 23, the issued a notification of handing over the management of two colleges to Zindagi Trust.

Those two colleges are Khatoon-i-Pakistan Govern-ment College and Rana Liaquat Ali Khan Government College of Home Economics.

He said the government had already given the management of SMB Government Girls College Karachi to Zindagi Trust this year when the interim government was in power.

“Today they are handing over the management and gradually the management will remove all teachers and ultimately after three to four years Zindagi Trust will be the owner of the colleges,” he alleged.

Rana Liaqat Ali Khan Government College is the college which offers education in the subject of home economics and even Karachi University did not offer this facility, he said.

He said the college was in a position to achieve the status of university and if it was handed over to a private management the middle class would be affected severely.

He said now they were only protesting in Karachi but after Eid, teachers of entire Sindh would join the resistance movement.

The government must take its decision back, he demanded.—PPI