THE nation’s long cherished goal of ‘Education for All’ is stumbling as the ruling party-affiliated demons are swallowing most lands owned by government primary schools across the country, particularly in Dhaka and Chittagong cities. The ongoing anarchy in grabbing government school lands by realtors, influential people, NGOs, school management committees, and in some cases the administration itself will retrogress the upward trend in achieving education goals and other social indexes. The horrendous scenario of primary education in the country came to light as a vernacular national daily reported that lands, buildings, and classrooms of 28 government primary schools out of 342 in Dhaka city have already been grabbed. We fear that the grabbing spree of school lands will abandon our goals of achieving compulsory primary education and 100 percent literacy rate because a large number of children are enrolled in the government schools.
The daily said the grabbers, including the Girls Guide Association, members of school management committees, local influential people, have already grabbed 240.95 decimal of lands, and are using the lands as community centres, garages, goat farms, or as places for setting up shanties or shops – this exposes the prevailing condition of primary education also. A report prepared by the office of Dhaka District Primary Education Officer also revealed the same picture of primary schools. The report also mentioned that the Primary and Mass Education Ministry could not recover the land as the grabbers are enjoying the lands under cover of court orders in their favour. Meanwhile, local police have set up a camp by occupying two floors of a three-storied government primary school at Pahartali in Chittagong, forcing 500 students into three overcrowded classrooms. The ongoing blows at the government primary schools seems to purport that the poor have no rights to education, although article 17 of the Bangladesh Constitution stated – “The State shall adopt effective measures for the purpose of (a) establishing a uniform, mass-oriented and universal system of education and extending free and compulsory education to all children to such stage……”
There are allegations that the court cases are also shown collusively and no step is taken to settle the dispute. We hate to sound negative always, but the question is who will do positive works for the government and the land grabbers of educational institutions? This is intolerable.
