The upazila administration in Pangsha, Rajbari, has handed an unusual punishment to four students who skipped school to go swimming in a pond. Each of them has been ordered to plant 200 saplings, 800 in total.

Pangsha Upazila Nirbahi Officer (UNO) Md Rifatul Haque gave the order on the afternoon of Thursday, 25 June.

It was learnt that around midday the UNO saw four students in school uniform at the pond landing of the upazila parishad. When he spoke to them, it emerged that they had come from school to swim there.

Md Rifatul Haque said that at about 1.40pm on Thursday, on his way back from a tree distribution event at the BRDB office, he saw the four students standing at the landing of the pond on the east side of the upazila parishad. Asked who they were, they said they were students of Pangsha Government George Pilot High School and had taken leave during the tiffin break to swim in the pond. When the school was contacted, it said none of them had been given leave.

He said that in the afternoon the four students came with their guardians and admitted what had happened. They had forged a teacher's signature to produce an approved leave application and left the school with it. The guardians promised it would not happen again. The students were then warned and released, with orders to plant 200 saplings each within the next seven days.

A person has previously died while swimming in the same upazila parishad pond, and a warning signboard has been put up there for that reason.

Source: Jagonews24. First published in Bengali on The Agro News.