By Nazar Abbas
This is no cattle pen but a girls’ school building in a village of Pakistan’s second largest province Punjab, which has been dysfunctional for the past eight years.
Female students of Imam Nagar, a village in Rahim Yar Khan, are being denied the right to education as Government Girls Primary School has been merged with another school, four kilometers away.
“ We want our school back in our village so we can study”, female students protesting over the shifting of their school said.
Ironically, the boy’s school building adjacent to the girls’ school building is running properly but the girl’s school has been shut down.
Locals Mohammad Siddiq Rafiq and Bashir Ahmed told Pak Voices that the school building is under the occupation of influential people.
“We demand the government to immediately restore the school so that our girls can continue their studies”, they said.
It merits mentioning that a large number of schools in Southern Punjab exist only on paper while there is also no dearth of schools, which are non-functional and are under the personal use of locals.
Nazar Abbas is working with PakVoices as a citizen journalist from Rahim Yar Khan.
All photos by the author.
Translated by Aneela Riazuddin
