ZP’s Rs 184-crore proposal for SSA needs rethink: Edu dept

The state government is carrying out a drive from October 3-5 to weed out bogus students. While the SSA has proposed a large-scale project in rural and urban areas as well as the two municipal corporations and was cleared in March and the municipal bodies and the Zilla Parishad was to line up proposals,however there is no development on it as of now. “There were huge pressures on the election process and other projects. We should be starting to roll out the process soon,especially with the training of additional teachers,” said a senior Zilla Parishad official.

A teachers’ training plan and to construct nearly 700 schools has been proposed by the ZP members.

“We are assessing expenses for teachers’ training. We will soon come out with a detailed plan. We also plan to construct around 700 schools in rural areas,” said a senior ZP official. Pune ZP CEO Anil Kawade,who took charge on June 30,had promised to focus on the programme.

PMC officials said they have an allocation of around Rs 24 crore of which Rs 665 lakh were to be allocated for additional teachers and for free text books while Rs 446 lakh was towards text books and the teachers salary allocation was coming to around Rs 10 crore.

With the Centre making an allocation of Rs21,000 crore for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) in the Union Budget,the education department of the Pune Zilla Parishad (ZP) stands only next to Thane in the fund allocation for Rs184 crore for the next fiscal would be approved by the Union government.

According to ZP officials,the higher allocation of funds would increase the students covered under the programme.