Educational institutions closed due to strike

Kathmandu, Aug 15: The educational institutions across the country remained closed today due to the educational strike enforced by the All Nepal National Independent Students Union (Revolutionary), close to the CPN (Maoist) led by Netra Bikram Chand 'Biplav'.

The students union enforced the strike calling for decreasing the fee hike by private schools.

Classes at the community and private schools and most of the campuses under the universities did not operate due to the strike.

Although the Ministry of Education has invited the students organisation for talks to address its demands, decisive talks have yet to take place due to the delay in the appointment of the Education Minister.

The student union has also demanded increasing the 10 per cent scholarships that the private schools have been providing to meritorious students from the remote areas and underprivileged groups.

Vice-president of the ANNISU (Revolutionary) Lal Bahadur Tamang said they were compelled to close classes at the educational institutions as the agreements that were signed with the concerned bodies from time to time were not implemented.

He said his organisation would launch protest programmes on a phase-wise manner for fulfillment of their demands for educational reforms.

President of the National Private and Boarding Schools' Association of Nepal (N-PABSAN), Karna Bahadur Shahi said the closure of the educational institutions in the name of educational strike would send out a negative message and they announced a holiday for students today as they could not take risk. He stated that they are ready to increase the scholarship quotas by 30 per cent if the government provides them with concessional loans and other facilities.

President of the Guardians Association of Nepal, Suprabhat Bhandari said that the schools should be declared as emergency service like the hospitals. He also urged the government to fulfill the demands of the students union.

Meanwhile, the National Coalition for Children as Zones of Peace and Child Protection (CZOPP) and the National Campaign for Education (NCE) among other organisations working in the education sector have urged the government and the protesting students unions to create environment where the educational institutions can operate smoothly, saying the repeated closure of schools and strikes at educational institutions has restricted the rights of the students to get education and also breached the principle of school as zone of peace.