Officials on Friday said efforts to reopen schools after a year of pandemic and months of unrest in reaction to a military coup could become the latest battleground in Myanmar.
Major Kaung Htet San, of the junta’s information team, said this to the media during a news conference.
“We tried to reopen the schools, but there are some people who want to destroy this, by doing wrong things to force the students not to go to schools. It is too bad.’’
San said like many other civil servants, the bulk of the country’s teachers have refused to work, part of a nationwide protest against the military coup that unseated the democratically-elected government on Feb. 1.
More than 70 per cent of teachers had opted to stay home.
The push to reopen had some educational urgency since so many children stayed home for most of the year before the coup as the country tried to combat the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic.
San said the government was trying to make the teachers realise that protests against the government should be a separate issue from whether schools operate or not.
He made his arguments even as thousands of protesters come out on the streets across the country to shout anti-coup slogans.
Besides education, the current leaders are having a hard time getting everything from health care to basic government processes to work with so many people refusing to work out of protest. (dpa/NAN)
