Ludhiana: More than 150 parents of Green Land Convent School, Chander Nagar, Civil City, students staged a protest against the school on Friday. They asked the school authorities to waive off all charges including admission fee and transportation charges.
The authorities declared summer break from August 1 and decided to restart online classes from August 20, Thursday. The school management informed all parents about the online classes, but sent link to only a few, who paid all the charges.
The parents wanted to meet the Principal of the school, but authorities didn’t let them enter. Seeing no other option, the parents protested outside the school for a couple of hours.
Several parents complained about the financial losses they faced due to the COVID-19 lockdown, for which they were unable to pay the fee. According to them, they want to request the authorities to waive off admission and transportation fee and other charges.
“My children study in Classes 3 and 6. I visited the school to ask school authorities to waive off charges other than tuition fee. In this time of financial crisis, we are unable to pay the other charges but school authorities are not ready to cooperate. We received a message from school that online classes will be started from August 20. When we did not receive the link, we contacted the class teacher, to which she replied that students will be allowed to attend online classes only if they pay fee,” Amit Khanna, a parent, was quoted as saying by Hindustan Times.
Another parent, Anny, who is a housewife, said, “We are ready to pay the tuition fee, but the authorities must waive off the other charges. The school authorities have asked parents to submit transportation fee and other development charges. My daughter studies in Class 3 and the authorities have asked us to deposit Rs 25,000, which includes all charges, only then she will be allowed to attend online classes.”
School director, Rajesh Rudra, though said the school is following the orders from Punjab and Haryana high courts. “We are just abiding the Punjab and Haryana high court’s orders which allows the school authorities to charge tuition fee and admission charges,” Rudra said.