The polytechnic students are scheduled to hold a sit-in programme in front of the High Court and demonstrations at all polytechnic institutes across the country today demanding the cancellation of a verdict on craft instructors.
Under the banner of ‘Karigari Chhatra Andolan, Bangladesh’ the protesting students announced their decisions at a press briefing held on the Dhaka Polytechnic Institute campus on Saturday.
Their demands include the cancellation of a High Court verdict that allows the promotion of craft instructors to the post of junior instructor; 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 world and taking legal action against the organisations that are appointing diploma engineers to posts belonging to lower than the 10th grade.
At the press briefing, the movement representatives said that a hearing on the High Court’s verdict would be held today.
Protesting at this, they said that they would hold a human chain and sit-in programme in front of the court.
They would also hold protest and demonstrations at all polytechnic institutes today with the same demands.
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.
Later on, from April 29 they went for a campus shutdown programme for an indefinite period under which they shut down the academic activities in all the polytechnic institutes across the country.
They decided to relax their shutdown movement on May 7 for the time being after the government gave them assurances to meet their demands and go back to classrooms.
The country has 482 polytechnic institutes, according to the Bangladesh Economic Review 2024.
The estimated number of students in the institutes is over 3,00,000, according to the Bangladesh Education Statistics 2022.