To protest against the delay in submission of a report by the Committee constituted by the Telangana government, to review issue of school fee hike, Hyderabad Schools Parents Association has started a ‘Postcard Campaign’ on Sunday to draw the Telangana Chief Minister’s attention to their problems.
With the slogan “Let’s write to CM sir!” the association has posted over 2000 postcard in batches at General Post Office in Abids in various languages like Telugu, Hindi, English and Urdu.
“KG to PG free mein padhaate bolke, School feesaan itii badhaana? Yeich hai Bangaru Telangana? (After promising free KG to PG, why have school fees gone up so much? Is this Bangaru Telangana?)” wrote Mohammed Sharif from Shalibanda.
“Meeru school fee dopidi ni aapaka potey, memu meeku voteleyadam aapestam. (If you don’t stop the school fee loot, we will stop giving votes to you),” wrote Saritha from LB Nagar in Hyderabad.
Hundreds of people gathered at the post office along with their children for the protest.
To strengthen the protest further, the HSPA has also initiated the postcard sending campaign to Prime Minister Narendra Modi asking for a central legislation for school fee regulation with a slogan, “School fee loot rokne ko – Ek postcard CM ko, Ek postcard PM ko.” (To stop school fee loot, one postcard to CM, one to PM)
“We have sent around 2000 postcards to Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao on Sunday and about 100 postcards to the Prime Minister. We hope now the state will address the issue and listen to our grievances,” said Ashish Naredi from HSPA.
“We have been fighting for this cause for a long time. What else should we do other than writing to the government?” added Ashish.
“The government doesn’t even need to spend one paisa to fulfill our demands. All that we ask for is regulation of school fees so that our money is not looted,” said Pavan, one of the organisers of the campaign.
In January this year, the state government announced that it will bring a new GO to regulate fees in private schools after examining the new draft rules framed by the Director of School Education.
A committee headed by the former vice-chancellor of Osmania University Prof T Tirupati Rao, with Commissioner and Director of School Education G Kishan as the convenor was supposed to submit a report on school fee regulation on April 20. However, they missed the deadline, prompting parents to launch the protest.
After the delay in submitting the report, the association has now aimed to send over 10,000 postcards before the end of this month to the CM.
“We had started a ‘Give a missed call to stop fee hike campaign’ last year and received more than 2 lakh calls. But we could not get an appointment with the CM to submit the data. We are hopeful that after receiving 10,000 postcards directly at his doorstep, he would at the very least give us a hearing,” said Ramanjeet Singh, Joint Secretary of HSPA.