Punjab Education Minister Dr Murad Raas Saturday announced the complete closure of all public and private educational institutes in the seven districts from March 19.

Dr Raas posted on Twitter that educational institutes should complete their examinations till March 19 and after that, no institute would be allowed to remain open for any reason.

He wrote: “All Public & Private schools are only allowed to take examinations (Send Ups & Entry Exams) till Friday 19th March 2021. After Friday all Schools will be shut down completely. Please adjust your schedules accordingly. Anyone in violation will be sealed.”

https://twitter.com/DrMuradPTI/status/1371411225674924034

Earlier, the Punjab government has announced to shut the educational institutes in seven districts including Lahore, Rawalpindi, Multan, Sialkot, Faisalabad, Gujranwala, Gujrat and Sargodha from March 15 but allowed them to take the examinations.

However, now the institutes in all these seven districts have been given a deadline to complete their examination procedure accordingly.

https://twitter.com/DrMuradPTI/status/1371416023094554626

Pakistan is currently under the third wave of coronavirus and Punjab is the worst-hit province with having over 10,000 active cases. According to NCOC, Punjab is contributing 55% to the mortality rate of the coronavirus in the country.