LAHORE: Different student organisations from public and private sector educational institutions on Saturday announced holding student solidarity marches across the country on Feb 12.
Progressive Students Collective (PSC) Central General Secretary Iqbal Khan, The Students’ Herald Chief Editor Qazi Shehryar, PSC Spokesperson Sara Ali, PSC Information Secretary Sher Ali, former vice president Ali Raza, and JKNSF leader Mujeeb Akbar jointly held a press conference at the Lahore Press Club on Saturday.
They announced to hold a march in Lahore from the Government College University (GCU) to the Punjab Assembly to address the issue of student suicides along with various problems faced by students in higher educational institutions.
Speaking at the press conference, Mr Khan stated that students were suffering from alienation and severe distress due to rising university fees, constant humiliation, harassment, and the absence of student representation in decision-making processes.
He said that students of public universities, in particular, face humiliation at the hands of bureaucratic administrations, while students of private universities were troubled by the arbitrary policies of the private education ‘mafia’, whose sole objective was to extract money from students.
He further claimed that private universities admit students beyond the number permitted by the Higher Education Commission (HEC) purely for profit. He said that the private educational institution would deliberately fail students to drop them out.
He said, tragically, the government was involved in privatizing public sector schools, colleges and universities instead of regulating private universities.
PSC Spokesperson Ms Ali said that students in universities were continuously humiliated in every possible way and this humiliation would begin right at the university gate, where security guards interrogate them with endless questions before allowing entry.
She said that students were paying health funds as part of their fees, yet they were not provided with health insurance in return. She said that complaints of sexual harassment were mocked and there was no effective mechanism to address such humiliation or provide justice.
Mr Raza demanded restoration of student unions which were banned for the past forty years. He said the unions were the only institutions that could truly represent students’ issues and work toward their resolution. He said they were holding nationwide Student Solidarity Marches on Feb 12 to demand the restoration of student unions and solutions to other ongoing campus issues.
