HYDERABAD, May 20: The Muttahida Tuleba Mahaz, an alliance of student organizations of the country, has announced the boycott of youth convention convened by President Gen Pervez Musharraf on Saturday.

Speaking at a news conference on Thursday, the president of the MTM and the Nazim-i-Aala of Islami Jamiat-i-Tuleba, Zubair Gondal, said that it was announced that selection of students would be made from educational institutions to appoint a students' parliament but this had not been done.

He said that the procedure adopted for the selection was that students were called at the governor's house and 70 per cent girls and 20 per cent boys were selected. He alleged that a majority of selected students belonged to so-called enlightened and progressive class.

He said that the MTM had already cautioned that if students were selected and not elected then the entire exercise would be futile. He said that the procedure should have been to hold elections at the university and college level to form the students parliament.

He claimed that representatives of bogus NGOs invited to Islamabad were neither known to students nor they had any role to play in students politics. He alleged that changes had been brought about in the syllabus at the instance of America.

He said that the Agha Khan Board was used for this purpose. He said that the main objective of deleting the Quranic verses from the syllabus was to convert Pakistan into a secular state.

He feared that within the next 10 years, the entire syllabus would be changed and the fees would be increased by 10 per cent every year. He said that students community would resist any move to change the syllabus.

MARKET COMMITTEES: Sindh Abadgar Board president Abdul Majeed Nizamani has supported demands of the All-Sindh Tajir convention and criticized the establishment of market committees in the province.

In a statement issued on Thursday, he said that it was only in Sindh throughout Pakistan that market committees had been handed over to contractors.

He said that the entire burden of market committee fees had been placed on the agriculture sector and added that despite loot and plunder unleashed by contractors no sheds had been constructed for growers and even godowns had not been made available for the agriculture produce.

He said that despite clear instructions from the Sindh agriculture minister that all roadside market committees' check posts should be removed, the same were still functioning.