All set to observe July 5 as Black Day in Pindi

Local leadership of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has finalized all arrangements to observe July 5 as black day in protest of the infamous dictatorial rule imposed by Zia-ul-Haq in 1977, toppling the democratically elected government.
Zia ousted the elected government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on July 5, 1977 and stayed in power for eleven years despite promising to hold general elections within 90 days. Rawalpindi PPP President Amir Fida Paracha told APP that party workers would gather at Liaquat Bagh from across the district to participate in a demonstration to reiterate their commitment to support the cause of democracy and express hatred against non-democratic forces.
Pakistan Bait-ul-Maal Managing Director Zammurd Khan said PPP rendered unmatched sacrifices to strengthen democracy in the country and the workers would follow footprints of Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto under the dynamic leadership of PPP Co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari. PPP Central Executive Committee member Qazi Sultan Mehmood, who remained in jail for around four years during the Zia regime, termed the July 5 the darkest day in the history of the country as a large number of democracy-loving people were sent behind the bars, hanged to death and subjected to flogging publicly. But they did not bow before the forces of tyranny.
He blamed that Zia introduced the Kalashnikov and drug culture in the country, besides fanning sectarianism. The entire nation is facing a number of challenges at national and international fronts due to the policies adopted during the Zia era, he said. “What we are facing today is the result of the seed sown by Zia,” he added.
ADB study highlights dark side of private education: The booming private tutoring industry, known as ‘shadow education,’ is less about remedial help for students and much more about competition and creation of differentials, according to a new report produced by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Comparative Education Research Centre (CERC).
In Asia, it may also dominate the lives of young people and their families maintain and exacerbate social inequalities, divert needed household income into an unregulated industry and create inefficiencies in education systems. Costs associated with ‘shadow education’ are staggering, the report said adding in Pakistan, expenditures on tutoring per child averaged the equivalent of $3.40 a month in 2011, which is a significant amount.
In Hong Kong, China, the business of providing private tutoring to secondary schools reached $255 million in 2011 while in Japan, families spent a whopping $12 billion in 2010 on private tutoring. The demand for private tutoring is partly driven by negative perceptions of traditional schooling and the belief that extra lessons are essential for academic success. However, private tutoring is not always effective in raising academic achievement; and in some schools students commonly skip classes or sleep through lessons because they are tired after excessive external study. This means that the shadow system can make regular schooling less efficient, it added.
Some teachers are also focusing more on private lessons than regular classes, leading to another cause of inefficiency. Especially, problematic are situations in which teachers provide extra private lessons for pupils for whom they are already responsible in the public system. This can lead to corruption when teachers deliberately teach less in their regular classes in order to promote the market for private lessons.
The report says policymakers across the region need to take a closer look at how shadow education affects family budgets, children’s time, and national education systems. Policymakers should then design regulations to protect consumers while focusing on improvement in mainstream schools in order to reduce the need for private lessons.
Commuters, residents demand repair of road: The motorists and commuters who daily travel on the busy Murree Road are perturbed over the non-repair of the city’s main road and have urged the authorities concerned to do the needful at the earliest.
A number of people talking to APP said that the road near Shamsabad U-Turn was fast breaking, but no one was ready to repair it despite repeated requests. The irony of the situation has further aggravated as the Rawalpindi Development Authority (RDA), Tehsil Municipal Authority (TMA) and the Punjab Highway Department (PHD) are not ready to carry out the repair work.
Shafik Koreshi, a resident, said it was strange that though the chief minister Punjab had sanctioned funds to carry out expansion and carpeting of the city roads, no department was ready to carry out simple patch work to save the road from further damage.
He said one wonders if the officials of the concerned department had read the saying, “a stitch in time saves nine”. Another resident Adnan Ahmed while criticising the attitude of the concerned said, “it looks the people have to approach higher courts for the redressal of these minor issues”. The road users have appealed to the area MNA Hanif Abbasi to look into the matter for its early repair.