Polytechnic students on Sunday vowed to continue their protests, saying that the issue over their demand for not promoting craft instructors to the post of junior instructor was yet to be settled in court.
The protesting students under the banner of ‘Karigari Chhatra Andolan, Bangladesh’ made the announcement at a press conference held in front of the High Court gate in the capital Dhaka after the Appellate Division had granted a leave to appeal during the hearing of a petition against a High Court verdict regarding the issue on the day.They held a sit-in there from the morning to afternoon, demanding the cancellation of the verdict on the promotion of craft instructors to the post.
The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court on Sunday upheld a stay on a High Court verdict that directed the Directorate of Technical Education to accommodate craft instructors in relevant government organisations, reserve positions for them, and promote junior craft instructors based on qualifications — if such posts are not exist.
The Appellate Division also granted leave to appeal to the directorate, allowing it to challenge the High Court’s March 18 verdict through a regular appeal.As a result, the stay issued earlier by the chamber judge remains in force, barring any action based on the High Court order until the matter is finally disposed of.
On April 20, the chamber judge of the Appellate Division stayed the High Court verdict after the directorate filed a petition, following protests from the students of polytechnic institutions across the country.
The original High Court verdict came in response to a writ petition filed by craft instructor Md Ashik Miah in 2024.
He had challenged the absence of promotion opportunities for non-gazetted employees, including craft instructors, under the Directorate of Technical Education.At the press conference, Masfik Islam Dewan, a student of Dhaka Polytechnic Institute, later said that the protesters thought that a solution to the issue would come through the court order, but it did not happen.
‘There is no progress towards the solution to the issue. There will be hearing again, but the date for hearing is yet to be set,’ said Masfik.
He said that the protests would continue to press their six-point demand that also included the cancellation of the opportunity to enrol on the diploma in engineering course at any age, designing a four-year quality curriculum based on the model of the developed countries and taking legal action against the organisations that are appointing diploma engineers to the posts belonging to below the 10th grade.
The next programme to press the demands will be announced soon, said Masfik.Another Dhaka Polytechnic Institute student, Jubayer Patowari, said that polytechnic students would never accept the promotion of craft instructors, who mainly clean and keep safe laboratory equipment, to the post of junior instructor, who is, in fact, a teacher at polytechnic institutes.
To press their demands, polytechnic students began their countrywide demonstrations on April 16 by blocking roads, highways and rail tracks that continued till April 22.
From April 29 they went for a campus shutdown programme under which they shut down the academic activities in all the polytechnic institutes across the country.
They decided to relax their shutdown programme on May 7 for the time being after the government gave them assurances of meeting their demands.The country has 482 polytechnic institutes, according to the Bangladesh Economic Review 2024.
According to the Bangladesh Education Statistics 2022, the estimated number of students in the institutes is over 3,00,000.