LAHORE: The owners of Punjab Education Foundation (PEF) partner schools and their teachers have threatened to close all the schools in the province over non-payment of monthly fee of their students.

The owners and teachers under Education Voucher Scheme (EVS) on Monday gathered outside the press club and lodged a protest against the administration. Under the scheme, the government was supposed to pay the fee of students to owners of the schools.

The protestors were carrying placards and banners inscribed with slogans against the PEF administration. They said that the administration had not paid students’ fee for a couple of months and also failed to issue salaries of thousands of teachers in Ramazan and Eidul Fitr.

One of the school owners, Maqsood Ahmed, claimed that the PEF administration had not raised the monthly fee of students for three years due to which it had become difficult for them to meet the needs.

He criticised the PEF administration for appointing retired army officers as monitoring officers of schools whom they said did not have any experience to deal with teachers and academic staff. He also claimed that the monitoring teams harassed and humiliated their staff and also imposed heavy fines over minor violations.

“There is no mechanism to challenge the fines and authorities are involved in humiliating the school owners,” he added.

The protesters vowed to continue their struggle against the administration and protest outside the central office of the PEF.

They also appealed to Chief Justice of Pakistan Mian Saqib Nisar, caretaker Chief Minister Dr Hassan Askari and the education minister to take notice of the situation and direct the PEF administration to issues the funds.

PEF Director Tariq Mehmood told Dawn that the fee vouchers were delayed due to end of the financial year and would be issued soon after receiving the funds. There was no malpractice in monitoring because the teams had to get signatures of the school owners/administration on their observations during their visits, he claimed.

He also said that if the monitoring teams had imposed heavy fines on the owners over violations then they had a review system where the owners could challenge the fines. They had increased amount of the fee vouchers of grades 9 and 10 and had recommended to the government to increase the fee of primary and middle sections also.

Published in Dawn, June 26th, 2018