Markets and malls across Pakistan are open for business and brimming with people, but schools and colleges remain deserted and show no signs of reopening soon.
The boom in commercial activity has come as the South Asian country of over 210 million disregards surging coronavirus cases to push forward with plans to ease lockdown measures.
Inter-city travel, including domestic flights, is also picking up pace ahead of the Eidul Fitr holiday.
Critics have denounced this return to normalcy as hasty and inadvisable, particularly since the country has recorded more than 1,000 cases every day in May, with just a single exception.
However, while commercial activity is resuming across the country, there is still little clarity on the future of academic activity, as doubts continue to swirl over an expected resumption by mid-July.
Government officials and education experts fear that schools may not reopen for another six months, particularly in remote areas where safety guidelines, specially hygiene and social distancing rules, are hard to implement.
“It’s a challenging task for the government to reopen schools and colleges during this coronavirus pandemic, but the pressure is increasing every day,” Professor Mughees Uddin Sheikh, a Lahore-based educationist told Anadolu Agency.
“We never anticipated anything like this; it’s more than a war-like situation. Is our education system equipped to deal with? The answer is no.”
Across the country, high school students have been promoted to the next classes without taking regular examinations, and admissions to colleges will be granted on the basis of the previous year’s results.
While many universities and schools have started online classes, a majority of educational institutes in Pakistan do not have the system for distance learning, according to Sheikh.
“Only a few universities have proper virtual education facilities. Others are partially equipped. Many teachers are not even trained,” said Sheikh, who heads the media and communication department at a university in Lahore.
Sindh Education Minister Saeed Ghani said schools could remain closed for up to six months due to the risk of coronavirus spreading among children.
“We cannot take such a risk in the current circumstances. It [reopening of schools] totally depends on the pace of the epidemic. I am not in a position to say if schools will reopen [even] on July 15,” Ghani said.
