LAHORE: Hundreds of teachers, under the banner of Punjab Grand Teachers Alliance (GTA), on Friday observed a token strike in different schools of the province to press the government for the acceptance of their demands. Earlier, the GTA ended the sit-in outside the Civil Secretariat, that had been continuing for the last two days, and announced a token strike and boycott of classes by the teachers in the schools across the province. The teachers are demanding reversal of ‘controversial’ policies introduced by the Punjab government. The protesters, led by the Punjab Teachers Union (PTU) and GTA leaders, including Chaudhry Bashir Warraich, Rana Anwarul Haq, Rana Liaquat and Kashif Shehzad, demand a review of the new school timetable, cancellation of the privatisation of 13,000 public schools being handed over to the NGOs, and a removal of anomalies in their service and promotion rules. The protesters have warned of a complete strike if their demands are not met by the government. PTU’s Rana Liaqat told Dawn that in some districts a complete token strike was observed by schoolteachers, while in Lahore it was observed partially. He says the teachers will resort to a complete educational boycott in the schools if the government did not accept their demands. He says the district education authority was holding negotiations with the teachers’ representatives to convince them to end the strike. He says they will also observe a black day on October 5 on International Teachers’ Day. Their demands also include unconditional promotions for senior subject specialists (educators) (SSSEs) and assistant education officers (AEOs), time-scale promotions and in-service promotions for all cadres, pay and service protection, upgrade of teacher cadres, restoration of leave encashment, besides pension and income tax reforms for teachers, recruitment of new teachers, rehabilitation of school infrastructure, establishment of new science and computer labs and issuance of a computer and head teacher allowances.