The government is about to reopen educational institutions on September12, said a report on Friday quoting the education minister. These institutions have been shut for nearly 17 months since the outbreak of Covid-19. This is the longest ever closure impacting education. We would say better late than not further prolonging the closure to keep students away from learning. Without attending schools young birds are becoming demoralised; college and university students are getting involved in crimes and unethical activities. Suicide tendency is at work in many and unless we can get them back to schools soon, many of them may end up attempting on their own lives or abandoning studies.
On March 17, last year educational institutions were closed to contain the spread of Covid-19. The closure was extended several times and the latest date for reopening on August 31 has been extended to September 12. We would say it should not be extended anymore; enough is enough. We don’t disagree that such preventive actions were necessary but making the closure over such a longer time instead of making short breaks seems ill-planned; it poses the threat of making the nation impotent. Keeping the educational institutions closed longer would be extremely harmful to millions of students.
The government could procure enough vaccines easily at the beginning if it were sincere without keeping hands tied to Indian supply. And by now vaccination of students might have been completed. It rather wasted time looking for deals with parties looking for maximum commission from such deals instead of bargaining for minimum costs. A business house alone reportedly bagged Tk 231 crore commission for facilitating the vaccine deal with Serum Institute of India. What we would like to say is that if the government were able to procure enough vaccines at the beginning, it could roll out a nationwide mass vaccination programme starting last year and send students back to schools much earlier. Covid-19 has created the scope to keep educational institutions shut. We would say students’ vaccination must be carried immediately to reopen schools.
