BNP leader Khaleda Zia has announced that vehicles carrying O and A level examinees will remain outside of the purview of the hartal. While we condemn hartal violence of any sort, it is particularly deplorable that such events could put our school-going children in the line of danger.
Normally, fear and uncertainty has forced schools to stay closed in times of hartals, leaving our children stuck at home without any way of productively passing the time. This severely disrupts their education process and fosters an overall lax attitude towards the discipline needed to one day enter the workforce.
Furthermore, in the case of very young children, taking care of them on what would normally be a school day can be very difficult on the parents. Working parents may not have alternative arrangements for keeping their children supervised at home on such days.
Children should not have to pay the price for political violence. Our politicians must make it clear that school-goers should be able to go to school unmolested and without fear on hartal days. Harassment of vehicles carrying children is absolutely unacceptable.
We must come up with a workable exception for the treatment of vehicles with children in them, so that schools can operate as usual.
If we cannot find a way to keep our schools open in these unstable times, our children will be spending a major portion of their school days missing out on their education. The cost to our future could be enormous.
