SAHIWAL: Parents with their daughters protested outside the Pakpattan district commissioner’s office on Saturday against the Government Soma Primary School headmistress and the health nutrition supervisor who allegedly cut the hair of 16 students as punishment on Friday.

Protesters spread the hair on the road and chanted slogans against both Headmistress Razia Sultana and supervisor Zaib Ihsan.

Students said they had been tasked with cleaning and scrubbing the classrooms and washrooms of the school every day for the last one month.

Zaib Bashir, class III student, told reporters they were cleaning the rooms on Friday when they were called to the courtyard as some senior officer was visiting the school.

The senior officer asked the students about their dirty uniforms, to which they said they were to clean the school every day.

The complaint infuriated the headmistress who with the supervisor cut their hair as punishment as soon as the officer left the school.

Students cried and resisted, but the headmistress cut their hair one by one. When they came to her, the headmistress and the supervisor threatened the parents of expelling their girls from school, mother of class four student Alisha, told Dawn.

The mother of Munaza Amin, class III student, said they sent their girls to the school for education, and not for cleaning washrooms and classrooms.

Dawn learnt the headmistress and the supervisor have been suspended from service.

The district education officer and the district health officer will hold inquiries into the matter of their officials’ conduct.

Published in Dawn, January 21st, 2018