Ebtedai madrasa teachers, who are on a hunger strike unto death, rejected education minister's call to end their demonstration yesterday and said they would go on until the prime minister assured them of meeting their demand.

They want nationalisation of all registered madrasas.

The teachers met Education Minister Nurul Islam Nahid twice. Nahid asked them to return to their homes calling off the strike and assured them that their demand would be placed before the prime minister and the finance minister.

"He [Nahid] told us to withdraw our strike but did not make any promise. It was nothing but a farce," said Qazi Ruhul Amin Chowdhury, president of Bangladesh Swatantra Ebtedai Madrasa Shikkhak Samity, the organisation leading the movement.

"We don't expect such words from him. We want a specific announcement from the prime minister," he told The Daily Star.

Ruhul Amin said they did not get any salary from the government for decades.

"We don't have any other option but to continue our agitation," he said.

Yesterday, the education ministry had a meeting around 12:30pm at its technical and madrasa division's office room to discuss the issue. State Minister Quazi Keramat Ali was also present.

The meeting decided that the matter would soon be moved to the prime minister and the finance minister.

The president and general secretary of the samity were called in and informed of the meeting decision.

Around 3:00pm, the two along with the 20 teachers were invited to the ministry where the minister requested to go home.

"We will not go home. We have even requested the minister to give us an assurance that our madrasas will be nationalised in phases. But the minister did not agree with that," Ruhul said.

Meanwhile, at least 166 teachers became sick and eight of them were given intravenous saline drips. Six teachers had been hospitalised until yesterday, said the president.

There are around 48,000 teachers in about 10,000 madrasas who are not getting any pay, since the institutions got registered under the Madrasa Education Board in 1984.

In 1994, some 6,776 teachers of 1,519 madrasas started getting Tk 500 as allowances.

In 2013, the government elevated the amount to Tk 1,000. In 2016-17, the government increased the allowances of headteachers to Tk 2,500 and assistant headteachers to Tk 2,300.

But the rest of the teachers have not been paid any allowance from the government since 1984, said the teachers.