Many educational institutions take up plenty of other programmes to pay tribute to the martyrs of the 1952 Language Movement, but a majority of them don’t have Shaheed Minar, the iconic monument.
The government wants to build language monument in every school that doesn't have the memorial, according to officials at the education ministry and the primary and mass education ministry.
An initiative to build Shaheed Minar in these schools will be taken ‘soon’, they said.
But Education Minister Dipu Moni believes not all the institutions that don't have the monument need government help.
"The idea that everything has to be done with government support is wrong. If the institutions genuinely respect the spirit of Language Movement, they can build the monuments on their own. We will provide all support they may need,” she said.
As many as 22,000 out of 33,000 high schools are estimated to have no Shaheed Minar while the number is 40,000 of 63,601 at primary level, according to officials.
A parliamentary committee last year recommended a project to build Shaheed Minar at all the schools.
Md Ataur Rahman, an assistant director at the Directorate of Primary Education, told bdnews24.com they have a plan to build Shaheed Minar in the schools that don’t have one. "But there is no project to build Shaheed Minar in every school,” he added.
“We will launch an initiative soon to ensure that every school has a Shaheed Minar," Prof Md Shahedul Khabir Chowdhury, secretary to the Board of Intermediate and Secondary Education, said.