UNB, Dhaka :
The International Chittagong Hill Tracts Commission (CHTC) has sent a letter to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina calling upon her to take steps to nationalise primary schools in the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
The letter, signed by co-chairs CHT Commission Eric Avebury, Sultana Kamal and Elsa Stamatopoulou, was sent to the Prime Minister on March 27, said sources at CHTC.
The letter said media reports that 228 primary schools in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) are in danger of being closed down because they have not been brought under the nationalisation scheme in the face of technical difficulties with land registration. This will mean that 16,000 students, mostly from very remote areas in the three hill districts, will be left without any schooling.
A decision was taken in an inter-ministerial meeting in February 2013 to nationalise these schools by considering them as ‘special’ cases. This is a very practical and constructive way to ensure the continuation of these children’s education. It is not clear why this consideration can no longer be made.
The letter mentioned that it is not acceptable that students should have to suffer disruption in their education because of a glitch in the land ownership issue. Many of these students will have to travel long distances to enroll themselves into a school, many will have to leave their families, and many will drop out.
The economic condition of most of the families of these students is very bad. So, the CHTC called upon the government to immediately take steps to nationalise the 228 schools in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) which face closure otherwise.
Article 17 of the Constitution ensures ‘establishing uniform, mass-oriented and universal system of education and extending free and compulsory education to all children’ in order to ‘remove illiteracy’ by a timeframe as determined by law.
The Commission hopes that the Ministry of Education and the Directorate of Primary Education will take the necessary steps to ensure the continuation of education at these schools without any interruption and the schools will be nationalised at the earliest.
