Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his teachers’ day speech, would try to illuminate the students with his ideas but the dark reality is that thousands of Government schools of Uttarakhand are running without electricity.
Notably, out of 17,194 schools (I-VIII) of the State, 3,289 are without electricity similarly 1,117 schools are without drinking water facility. The departmental data revealed, 3,303 schools are without boundary walls and 5,481 schools do not have the playgrounds. One of the teachers, posted in a remote village of Dwarikhal block of Pauri Garhwal district, said that the rural students are deprived of many facilities which is one of the major cause of the decrease in enrollment.
The State convener of Uttarakhand Right to Education forum, Raghu Tiwari, said that it would be good if the Prime Minister addresses the issue of infrastructural facilities in schools. He informed that even after four years of its implementation, only 10 per cent of the schools of the country are complying the norms prescribed under RTE. It is unfortunate that the State Government is planning to close the schools with less student strength while the RTE mandates that a primary school should be located in every one km area and a secondary school should be located in every 3-km radius. Tiwari said that it would have been better if the PM had chosen the Children’s Day to address the children.
The education department is, however, all geared up to telecast the speech. The additional Director secondary education NK Bahuguna told The Pioneer that DEOs concerned have been asked to make all the preparation for telecast of speech for the students of class VI–XII. The principals would make arrangements of TV sets, generators and set-top boxes however the schools located in the remote areas of the state where the facility of TV sets and generators would not be possible are asked to make arrangements for broadcast of PM’s speech. Meanwhile, the Government has asked the power corporation to ensure that there is no power outage during the PM’s speech.