INDUSTRIALISATION TAKES TOLL ON EDUCATION
Khinda (SAMBALPUR): It has all the signs of being a school. Children sitting on a pencil and written bodly is Sarva Sikhya Abhijan (SSA). The classrooms are also aptly named Mahatma Gandhi Kakhya, Gopabandhu Kakhya and Veer Surendra Sai while the fourth room is meant for the Principal of the school.
But as you enter the Matlu Camp Upper Primary School at Matlu Camp housing displaced families of Talabira Coal Mines – 1 of Hindalco in one room tenements in village Khinda you are welcomed by lines of under garments and socks kept for drying in the sun while lines of shoes adorn the verandah. And as you enter the classrooms you are greeted not by students but by security guards of Hindalco, 45 of whom have made the school their barrack and mess since January 18, 2006. All the 51 students of the school have been shifted to Munda Pada EGS School nearby where 31 more students, from about 30 dalit families, of the EGS Centre jostle for space. But that is not the end of the whole universalisation of education programme of the state. The EGS centre neither has drinking water nor sanitation facility and students from class 1 to 5 of both the schools sit in the same hall where the teacher of EGS Centre Daitari Rout and Headmaster in-charge of the UP School Rudrani Padhi find it a tough job to reach out to the students. The two teachers are assisted by two girls who have been rendering their services free of cost at the instance of the Village Education Committee to pacify the students while the teachers teach a particular class.
While both Rout and Padhi admitted that they face a tough time teaching students of a class with other students creating disturbance having to sit idle, Rout said that when they were displaced from the school they were assured that it was a temporary arrangement and that they would be provided with a bigger school building. Refusing to disclose the name of the officials who had assured them, he said that there was little he could do to improve the situation.
But with the land on which the school existed having been acquired by major aluminium maker HINDALCO there is little the children can do. And with the villagers claiming that no site selection has yet been done for the proposed new school building before the lengthy process begins, the school has become permanent barrack for the security guards while the students will continue to be herded like cattle in their bid to become literate.
Khinda (SAMBALPUR): It has all the signs of being a school. Children sitting on a pencil and written bodly is Sarva Sikhya Abhijan (SSA). The classrooms are also aptly named Mahatma Gandhi Kakhya, Gopabandhu Kakhya and Veer Surendra Sai while the fourth room is meant for the Principal of the school.
But as you enter the Matlu Camp Upper Primary School at Matlu Camp housing displaced families of Talabira Coal Mines – 1 of Hindalco in one room tenements in village Khinda you are welcomed by lines of under garments and socks kept for drying in the sun while lines of shoes adorn the verandah. And as you enter the classrooms you are greeted not by students but by security guards of Hindalco, 45 of whom have made the school their barrack and mess since January 18, 2006. All the 51 students of the school have been shifted to Munda Pada EGS School nearby where 31 more students, from about 30 dalit families, of the EGS Centre jostle for space. But that is not the end of the whole universalisation of education programme of the state. The EGS centre neither has drinking water nor sanitation facility and students from class 1 to 5 of both the schools sit in the same hall where the teacher of EGS Centre Daitari Rout and Headmaster in-charge of the UP School Rudrani Padhi find it a tough job to reach out to the students. The two teachers are assisted by two girls who have been rendering their services free of cost at the instance of the Village Education Committee to pacify the students while the teachers teach a particular class.
While both Rout and Padhi admitted that they face a tough time teaching students of a class with other students creating disturbance having to sit idle, Rout said that when they were displaced from the school they were assured that it was a temporary arrangement and that they would be provided with a bigger school building. Refusing to disclose the name of the officials who had assured them, he said that there was little he could do to improve the situation.
But with the land on which the school existed having been acquired by major aluminium maker HINDALCO there is little the children can do. And with the villagers claiming that no site selection has yet been done for the proposed new school building before the lengthy process begins, the school has become permanent barrack for the security guards while the students will continue to be herded like cattle in their bid to become literate.
posted by Ratan K Pani at
6:17 AM
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