LAHORE, Oct 7: Punishment by teachers is the prime reason for increase in the dropout rate of students at primary level.

Poverty, parents’ lack of interest to educate their offspring and death of the bread winner were the other causes of dropout, working children said on Tuesday while speaking at a seminar on child rights protection.

As many as 66 working children, belonging to various parts of the province, attended the seminar organized by SPARC here and explained the problems they had been facing while taking part-time education offered by the different NGOs.

SPARC coordinator Muhammad Yasin said it had launched the Child Protection Monitoring Tools (CPMT) programme for the working children of small towns.

He said the CPMT was functioning in the remote areas of Arifwala and Bahawalpur. Under the programme, the working children were taught in their free time and some of them were also trained to persuade their colleagues to join the CPMT.

MPA Shaheen Atiqur Rahman said that 30 per cent children left the school because of fear of teacher’s punishment. Keeping this fact in view, she said that the government would recruit female teachers for primary schools in the future.

She said the government was also planning to direct doctors to visit the government schools in the province on monthly basis to keep the children healthy.

Punjab University’s Mass Communication department chairman Dr Mugeesuddin Sheikh urged the NGOs and philanthropists to come forward and establish schools, especially in slum areas, so that gypsy children could also take education.