Written by: Express News Service
2 min readVadodaraNov 21, 2009 04:17 AM IST
First published on: Nov 21, 2009 at 04:17 AM IST
Angry over the non-functional girl’s schools in four tribal talukas of Vadodara district,the villagers have decided to organise protest programmes during the Gunotsav festival,which starts next Monday.
The Ministry of Tribal Affairs had started the 12 girls’ residential schools in the low literacy pockets of Kwant,Naswadi,Pavi Jetpur and Chhota Udepur in October 2008. But after a recent notification to merge the schools at Rangpur village in Kwant,the schools were closed down last month.
The teachers have stopped coming to the village schools,while the students are given meals by the villagers. Angered by the abrupt closure of the school mid-session,the villagers from Kwant and Naswadi submitted a memorandum to the respective mamlatdars on Friday to carry out their protests during Gunotsav.
“The schools have been rendered non-functional since last month and though they want to shift the schools to Rangpur,the premises there have no proper infrastructure. On one hand while the government is celebrating Gunotsav,schools here are being closed,” said Ratan Bhagat,a villager at Kwant.
S M Patel,the project administrator of the girls’ residential school said: “The grant from the Centre was released with a condition to have functional schools within a year. So,in order to utilise the grants,we had started small schools at rented premises till we found a proper facility. We are now trying to a have a proper residential set-up at Rangpur with every facility. We will subsequently incorporate the facilities.”
The girls’ residential schools had started with Class VIII and this year,Class IX will be included. There are around 200 students in the 12 schools and the school in the new premises at Rangpur is expected to start from Monday.
Share
