Even as all public and private schools, which were forced to shut down for almost one week, prepare to reopen from Sunday, the Maoists have not stopped using them to house their cadres ferried into Kathmandu Valley from across the country. The Maoist cadres have been sheltering mainly at schools in the vicinity of the 26-km Ring Road to facilitate hitting the streets for their ´decisive battle´.[break]
"Yes, our cadres are still in the schools," Mangal BK, president of All Nepal Public Health Workers Association (ANPHWA), said. "And we will continue to shelter in the schools. But we are sincere not to hamper classes."
According to BK, the number of Maoist cadres, who flocked to the capital to enforce their strike, has dwindled as some of them have returned home to rest. "The number of remaining cadres is not unmanageable," he said. "So we can easily accommodate them [in schools] without hampering classes."
BK said that the Newa State Committee of the Maoists, which has been entrusted with the responsibility for room and board for their cadres, would not use any of the classrooms.
Instead, the committee would occupy empty spaces such as under-construction buildings or abandoned halls, to accommodate their cadres, BK said. "More importantly, our cadres would be on the streets during the daytime," he said. "They will return to the shelters only by evening. Therefore, there is no possibility of our cadres´ presence affecting classes."
However, Rajesh Khadka, president of Private and Boarding Schools´ Organization of Nepal (PABSON), stated that the Maoists must drive their cadres out of the schools. "I hope the Maoists would stop using our schools as shelters as their strike has already been called off," Khadka said. He did not buy BK´s argument about using schools as shelters without hampering regular classes. "Of course, the Maoists sheltering in schools will affect classes," Khadka summed up. "They must stop this."
Earlier, in the lead up to their general strike, the Maoist student union had called an educational strike on the pretext of a fee-hike row, closing down over 8,000 private schools across the country. After forcing around 1.5 million students to stay away from classes, the Maoists used the closed schools as shelter for their cadres. "With the ending of the fee-hike row, the Maoists have no justification for using the schools as shelters any more," said Bhoj Bahadur Shah, former PABSON president.
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