All 12 members of Parliament belonging to the ruling BJP representing Jharkhand in the lok Sabha have opposed the Government’s ongoing drive merging primary and middle schools in the State. The MPs in a combined letter addressed to Chief Minister Raghubar Das spelt out several reasons in the support of their demand.
The letter dated August 8 talked about possible misuse of defunct buildings following the closure, new schools becoming inaccessible for several children particularly those located in hilly terrains or forested areas and the drive being against the spirit of the Sarva Sikhsha Abhiyan (SSA).
“The drive to merge schools is continuing in all the districts of the State which is becoming a cause of resentment among people. All such schools have good buildings which may become hangouts for anti-social elements after getting left vacant. Numbers of students have gone up due to population growth and the children are turning to private schools. In this scenario efforts should have been to improve condition of the Government schools instead of shutting them down,” read the missive singed by Singhbhum MP cum BJP State president laxman Gilua, Ravindra K Rai of Koderma, VD Ram of Palamu and Karia Munda of Khunti.
Giridih’s Ravindra Pandey, Godda’s Nishikant Dubey, Hazaribagh’s Jayant Sinha, Sunil Singh of Chatra, Sudarshan Bhagat of lohardaga, Ramtahal Chaudhary of Ranchi, Bidyut Baran Mahto of Jamshedpur and PN Singh of Dhanbad have also showed their agreement to the demand.
The MPs have also expressed concern over difficult locations of many villages in the State which, they feel, would be even more inaccessible for the children living there. “Jharkhand is the State of smaller villages located at plateaus, forested areas and across difficult rivulets and drains. Smaller children travelling so far would be a difficult task which would further lead to illiteracy. Closing down the schools opened under SSA would be an unpopular move and would leave several villages without any school depriving children of primary education,” argued the MPs citing resentment existing among the people which the leaders are have to face at present.
The communiqué at the end again urged the CM to direct the officials for at least suspending the drive for one year and let the condition of the schools to improve which have come onto the radar of the Department due to their lower enrollment ratio.