Civil society organisations (CSOs) have demanded restoration of the State Institute of Education and Technology (SIET) and all ICT school programmes including Edusat to be handed over to the organisation with reappointment of the employees retrenched by the State Government.
CSO activist Pradip Pradhan said when the Edusat programme was going on successfully, the State Government closed down SIET by bringing out notification on April 29 ,2013 citing reasons like cessation of fund by Central Government for ICT @ school programme, disturbance created by employees and unwillingness of staff to generate revenue to run SIET in a self-sustained mode, loss of viability of SIET and subsequently retrenchment of all staff.
Pradhan further said perturbed over the said notification, an RTI application was filed to the Ministry of Human Resource Development CPIO seeking copy of the decision taken at Central Government level to close down SIET.
The CPIO responded that there was no such decision taken to close down SIET. But on RTI query, the State Government’s School and Mass Education Department provided copy of a false and fabricated letter of Central Government to close down SIET. On query about other two reasons, the department could not provide any satisfactory response, he said. Further, from the RTI expose, it was found that the Central Government has released Rs 40 crore to Odisha Government in 2012-13 to continue the programme. Now the question arises when there was availability of fund, why the Odisha Government decided to close down SIET, questioned Pradhan.