Bhaktapur: Nine student unions affiliated to various political parties including Nepali Congress (NC), CPN-UML and CPN-Maoist are padlocking the office of vice chairperson and member secretary of Higher Secondary Education Board (HSEB) and Council For Technical Education and Vocational Training (CTEVT) for an indefinite period in their second phase protest programme.

A meeting of nine student unions, today decided to padlock these two offices and prohibit entry of the officers into their offices.

As per the decision reached yesterday, the student unions will not allow the vice chairperson and member secretary of HSEB and CTEVT respectively to enter their office from August 1.

They have also padlocked the regional offices of these two educational institutions. U P Lamichhane, spokesperson, NSU said, “We will also burn the effigy of the education minister on August 2.” He said they would be launching a stern third phase protest programme from August 3 if the offices did not fulfil the students’ demands.

The students have been organising various protest programmes demanding removal of hoarding boards of plus two colleges, change of foreign names of colleges, determination of fee structure and other demands in the case of HSEB.

The issues related to CTEVT include implementation of fee structure for nursing and general medicine studies determined by the high level committee under CTEVT, scrapping of entrance exams for scholarship for various subjects of Intermediate and Diploma Level degrees held on July 19, and others.

They have also demanded scrapping of government decision to give facilities to former VIPs and end to government decision making through ordinance and the Prime Minister’s resignation to pave the way for political consensus.

source: The Himalayan Times,30 July 2012