WHEN most people are busy in pursuing personal interests, there is someone who strives to change society with his little efforts. A national daily on Monday featured that 91-year-old Abdul Khalek spent all his funds to build a school. With the money he earned by working at his tea-stall, he had bought a piece of land. In 1997, he donated this sole property for establishing a school, a dream since his childhood. Growing up in a buffer zone between two districts Cumilla and Chandpur, Khalek toiled a lot to reach to school five kilometres away. The indomitable Khalek completed eighth grade, then had to drop out of school because his father, a poor farmer, could not afford the cost of his studies anymore. Abdul Khalek did not want the young boys and girls of his village to face the same fate. He bought around 52 decimals of land in the Pakistan era. When he informed the villagers of his dream, two villagers came up.
Local youths volunteered to build the schoolhouse with bamboo fences and sheets of tin donated by the villagers. Although the school started its journey on January 1, 1997, as Abdul Khalek’s High School, the official name was changed to Nalua Chandpur High School to enlist it under the government’s Monthly Pay Order (MPO) scheme last year. Sirajul, a freedom fighter and one of the initiators of the school, explained that as per government rules, a school, named after an individual, needs to have a considerable sum of money in its fund. Locals hoped that the government will take initiatives to change the name back to Abdul Khalek’s High School to honour the nonagenarian’s contribution. The school currently has 437 students and 10 teachers, of whom six have been MPO listed last year.
When everyone from ministers to bankers and businessmen to politicians– the educated quarters, are busy satisfying their greed by any means, at this time there is a very great need of a Khalek — on whom we can depend and on whom we can put our trust.
