GUJRANWALA: Students of the Government Secondary School, Muraliwala, held a protest on Tuesday against shortage of classrooms and non-provision of furniture and other facilities.

They said the school administration did not allot them any classrooms and they were attending classes in the open and they had to take an off in extreme weather conditions. They demanded the chief minister order construction of their new school building and classrooms on a priority instead of distributing laptops.

Shahzad Hasan, the school headmaster, said he had informed the higher authorities about the issue. The old building of the school, founded in 1870, had been declared dangerous by the administration, he said, adding that school had 876 students but it did not have enough classrooms to accommodate all of them in classrooms.

Mr Hassan said the building and its equipments were unsafe without its boundary wall, the locals had made the school premises a garbage point and it’s a safe haven for drug addicts.

The executive district officer (EDO) education said survey of the school had been completed and its construction would begin after approval of funds by the Punjab government.

PENSIONERS: The Punjab Pensioners Association expressed resentment against non-payment of double pension to the pensioners who were 75 years old despite the supreme court’s order and demanded the provincial government give them an ad hoc relief besides double pension in accordance with the law.

During a meeting here, the association’s president Sanaullah Khokher and other pensioners said the government had given 50pc ad hoc relief to serving employees while 20pc to the retired employees while the federal government and three provincial governments, except Punjab, were paying double pension to 75-year-old pensioners besides ad hoc relief. To make the matters worse, the Punjab government had also stopped their medical allowance, they complained.

The pensioners said the government was deducting group insurance scheme from serving employees every month but nothing was being returned to them after retirement.

Published in Dawn, September 24th, 2014