Lahore: The cash-starved boards of intermediate and secondary education have imposed a Rs450 fee on each student, who has qualified the matriculation annual examination and wants a certificate.
All the eight boards were crying hoarse since the chief minister had directed the boards not to charge any fee from students appearing from public sector schools.
The financial position of boards further weakened with the announcement of 50 per cent increase in salaries and 15 per cent in medical allowance of employees.
To improve financial position of boards, the Punjab Boards Committee of Chairmen decided to impose Rs450 fee for issuing a certificate to successful students.
The Lahore board alone is expected to generate some Rs57.04 million from private as well as public sector schools' students. As many as 126,753 candidates have passed the matriculation annual examination from the Lahore board.
Board officials say boards were autonomous entities and could take measures and charge students to generate resources and save themselves from going bankrupt. They say the decision was taken in a recent meeting of the Punjab Boards Committee of Chairmen.
Students of public sector schools have condemned the boards' decision alleging that the boards had taken the decision in clear negation of Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif's vision of supporting the poor strata of society to seek education without any financial burden.
It is learnt that some students' parents had also approached boards' offices requesting them to waive off this fee as they would be required to pay for every service, including purchasing prospectuses of different colleges and getting admissions to colleges to seek higher education.
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