Himalayan News Service

Kathmandu, May 1:

The seven student unions have decided to lock the offices of the vice chancellor of Tribhuvan University and all public campus chiefs from tomorrow as a protest against the preventive detention of protesters against ‘regression’.

Vice president of NSU, Pradip Poudel, said the students should be released at the earliest or the government would be held responsible for the consequences.

Kundan Raj Kafle, FSU chairman of Pashupati Multiple Campus, Santosh Pandey, Prakash Rawal, Ajiwan Lamichanne and Om Prakash Dhungana of Diamond Times, are in preventive detention according to Public Security Act 1989. They were taken into custody on April 28.

“The government’s such suppressive ideas will only encourage us to announce more aggressive programmes,” said Poudel. He also said the student bodies would continue with the mini referendums in all the campuses of the nation.

The student bodies have also announced indefinite chakkajam at the Exhibition Road from tomorrow.

Meanwhile, the fee monitoring task force meeting held today at the All Nepal National Free Students Union (ANNFSU) office, has decided to start monitoring fee from tomorrow. The task force will probe irregularities in schools and will ask that the mistakes be corrected.

According to an agreement between student bodies, MoES and school management committees, schools cannot increase fees till the report by an 11-member committee under Janardan Nepal is submitted.

The fee monitoring task force comprises members of seven students unions --Badri Pandey, Khimlal Bhattarai, Lochan KC, Narayan Koju, Jeevan Gautam, Hari Vasti and Rameshwor Yadav. This task force was formed after parents started complaining about fee hikes in private schools during the time of admission.

The 11-member committee under Janardan Nepal with representatives from all stakeholders including student bodies was supposed to submit its report in September, but has not done so till now. Thirty-five schools have been chosen as ‘samples’ for the study on fee ceiling.

The education ministry had also formed an 11-member committee on May 15 under former secretary Jay Ram Giri to solve the crisis in the education sector regarding fee structure in private schools. But the student bodies rejected this committee’s report.