LAHORE, June 3: Activists of the National Students Federation staged on Sunday a sit-in against the proposed cuts in allocation for education sector in the federal budget for the next fiscal year.
Carrying placards and banners against the proposed allocation cut from two per cent to 1.8 per cent of the gross domestic product, the protesters gathered near the Lahore Press Club and stayed there for an hour or so.
Led by NSF Punjab President Arfan Chaudhry, the protesters demanded that education budget should immediately be revised and set at eight per cent of the GDP.
Mr Chaudhry regretted that the present government had continued the legacy of the previous military-led regime by increasing non-productive expenditures like defence and debt repayments throughout its five-year term.
He said there was no justification for defence spending to be 10 times more than that for education, and about 80 times more than that for healthcare. The government had violated Article 25-A of the Constitution by ignoring basic and fundamental rights of the population like education and healthcare.
The NSF president also criticised the Punjab government for wasting public resources on its political campaigns like laptops distribution and construction of Daanish schools. He said billions of rupees spent on such projects would benefit a minority of students while these funds should have instead been utilised for restructuring the public education sector of the province.
