Schools, campuses remain closed on second day of strike

Kathmandu, Aug 16: The educational institutions across the country remained closed on the second day of the 'educational strike' called by CPN (Maoist) aligned All Nepal National Independent Students' Union (Revolutionary).

The Union has posed a host of demands which include slashing the current fees in private schools and increment of scholarship percentage from the existing 10 per cent. With the strike continuing, educational activities in community schools, private schools and majority of the campuses with affiliation to universities have come to a halt.

Union's Vice Chairman, Lal Bahadur Tamang, shared that although the Education Ministry had set August 11 as the date for dialogue to discuss the demands, it could not materialize as the new government is yet to appoint an Education Minister.

"As per our announcement of the educational strike we have enforced the closure of the educational institutes to last until today, but if our demands are not addressed we will start phase-wise agitation," he warned.

Meanwhile, Children as Zone of Peace (CZP), National Campaign for Education (NCE-Nepal), Private and Boarding Schools' Organization Nepal (PABSON) among other educational associations have appealed to the government and the strike enforces to create an environment conducive to opening the schools reasoning that such strikes would infringe upon the concept of schools as zone of peace and curtail students' right to education.