Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) on Monday held the SAD-BJP and the Congress responsible for “poor plight of entire education system in Punjab” claiming that education was never on priority for previous as well as current regimes in Punjab.
“SAD-BJP and Congress have virtually ruined the Government educational institutions and to benefit private institutions, it deliberately neither made appropriate recruitment nor took any step to improve the structure of education system,” alleged AAP MP and party’s Campaign Committee chairman Bhagwant Mann.
On the name of improving the education, these parties just laid foundation stones of new colleges, he said.
Mann said that several vacancies of teachers were lying vacant in government colleges and even after the intervention of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, the State Government did not make any efforts to fill these vacancies. As a result of government’s apathy, majority of government colleges do not have permanent faculty, he said.
“Poor plight of the education system could be gauged from the fact that an illiterate Akali leader Tota Singh was installed as Education Minister and teachers who are demanding jobs, being beaten mercilessly by the police on the instruction of Akali Minister like Sikander Singh Maluka,” claimed Mann.
He said that due to acute financial crunch, prestigious Government Colleges and Universities like Guru Nanak Dev University (GNDU), Amritsar, and Punjabi University, Patiala, and Punjab Agriculture University (PAU), ludhiana, were unable to impart the quality education to students.
“Education and health is on the top priority of AAP and after coming to power, by providing ample budget to these sectors, standards of government schools and colleges would be upgraded on the pattern of Delhi,” said Mann adding that government teachers and principals would be sent abroad to attain special training of new techniques in the field of education, so that government institutions could be benefitted out of it.