Ahmedabad municipal school board has earmarked Rs 13.70 crore for purchase of new computers,IT training in its budget Even as the budget outlay for proposed computerisation of classrooms in municipals schools in Ahmedabad is awe inspiring,it is silent on maintenance costs of around 500 computers. Of its total budget of Rs 394 crore,the school board in its budget has earmarked Rs 13.70 crore for purchase of new computers,IT training and use of the latest information technology devices to computerise the classrooms. Ahmedabad school board member Habib Mev said: Currently,not more than 30-35 municipal schools across Ahmedabad district have computers. Although in 1998,over 119 schools had more than 500 computers. While on record,all the 119 schools are shown having computers,all of them were collected last year and dumped into a school storehouse because of some problem or the other. Also,a budget of Rs 80 lakh was earmarked last year for maintenance and repair of these computers,but till date nothing has happened. For effective computer education and management,the AMC has set aside a total of five crore rupees. Another 2 crore rupees are for computer-aided learning and computer awareness schemes,Rs 10 lakh for imparting computer training to teachers and clerical staff,and Rs 60 lakh for computerisation of the school board and the installation of biometric attendance system. A budget of Rs 6 crore has been earmarked for school IT systems. School board administrative officer,Lakhdhir Desai,said: This year,2,200 computers in 293 upper primary schools will be installed. The budget includes training of instructors for computer classes. Though complaints about non-functioning computers were forwarded to the authorities earlier,the schools continue to work without computers despite budgetary provision. When asked about the maintenance of the existing computers,the administrative officer said,We will chalk out a separate budget from the AMC e-governance scheme.
