To improve the attendance rate of girls in the schools, Punjab Government has disbursed attendance scholarship of Rs 27.86 crore to primary girl students in the educational institutions.
“This scheme was introduced under State Plan in 2008-09 for the SCs and BCs besides economically weaker families in the state,” informed the state SC-BC Welfare Minister Gulzar Singh Ranike.He said: “It is a hard fact that the parents or guardians, who belong to economically weaker section, mostly are not interested to educate their female child and even after getting admission in a school, she is compelled to leave studies and assist her parents to contribute for family income by performing nominal jobs.”Keeping these circumstances in view, the State Government had decided to introduce incentive in the form of attendance scholarships to check the dropout tendency among the girl students, the Minister added.The Minister said that in 2014-15, Punjab Government had provided financial aid of Rs 15 crore and in 2015-16, Rs 9.07 crore was provided to scheduled caste primary girl students under attendance scholarship. Besides this, the State Government has also provided scholarship of Rs3.02 crore to backward class and EWS (economically weaker section) in year 2014-15 and Rs 77 lakh in year 2015-16.Ranike said: “Under this scheme, monthly attendance scholarship is being provided per student for 10 months in a year. As per eligible criteria, the annual income of the parents or guardians should not exceed Rs one lakh and they do not have more than five acre of land.”