The Punjab Government has directed its technical education institutes to attend to its “diktat” of installing biometric attendance system and CCTV cameras or suffer the non-release of SC scholarship funds.
The directions come at a time when the state’s technical education institutes and the State Government are already at loggerheads over the non-release of funds under the Post Matric Scholarship Scheme for the SC students. These institutions have all along been insisting the governments at the Centre and in the state to release over `1,200 crore of the scheme for the year 2014-15, 2015-16, and 2016-17.
Terming government’s decision as no less than a “diktat”, a member of Punjab Unaided Colleges Association (PUCA), who did not wish to be named, said that the government was just trying to find a way out to save it from being answerable to us.
“It is just an attempt to buy some more time as the colleges have been pressurising the government to release funds under the SC scholarship scheme. Instead of being subject to blame, the government is trying to put us in dock,” said the PUCA member, who is also heading a set of colleges.
In a latest set of direction, Punjab Government has made it clear that the benefit of SC scholarships would be given to only those technical education institutions which would be connected with the Technical Education Department through the online system of CCTV cameras and bio-metric attendance system.
The directions were issued by State Technical Education Minister Charanjit Singh Channi on Friday after a meeting with the Department officials to bring the new reforms for the development of Technical Education, besides reviewing the progress of the Punjab Skill Development Mission.