Vigilance on movement of students increases

 TW Commissioner R.Laxman verifying registers 

The Tribal welfare department will enforce strict rules on permission for girl students of Tribal schools and hostels to go home, their movements being tracked on a regular basis.    

This decision comes in the wake of separate incidents in which two tribal girls were reportedly missing from tribal hostel and later found dead. Another girl eloped with a married person in Warangal district recently.

The State government took serious note of this while the opposition parties launched an agitation, alleging that the girls were raped and murdered and demanded an action against the culprits.   

Telangana Tribal welfare commissioner R. Laxman, who is inspecting the tribal welfare schools and hostels told the officials to maintain proper registers on student’s movements and their guardian’s contact information including photos.

A separate page will be kept for each student in the register and movements of the students will be entered time to time so that movement of the students will be tracked.

Tribal Welfare Commissioner R. Laxman inspected a girls’ school in Rasimetta in Jainoor mandal.

Laxman said ‘they are facing many problems with no proper maintenance of registers related to student’s movements when incidents took place like recently in Warangal and are now keeping a close watch on the movements of the students especially girls’.

Henceforth, hostel wardens and headmasters would only allow girls students to go out or to their homes in the villages with their parents’ or guardians consent.

Project officer of the ITDA, Utnoor R.V Karnan said ‘a separate page for each student would be maintained in the register and for all classes, and vigilance would be intensified’

Festivals affect Adivasi students

Adivasi children participating in Gussadi festival 

Festivals especially Diwali, proved to be a bane for Adivasi children’s education in the district.

It is found in a survey conducted by Council for Social Development (CSD) that Adivasi students are poor in their studies. Majority of Adivasis students studying in 

Tribal Ashram schools are not returning to hostels after coming home to celebrate their festivals. Adivasis celebrate Diwali for one month.    

There are incidents where students had not returned to hostels after coming to home for Pola festival.

However, it is true that active participation of the children in their festivals will certainly help in preserving their unique traditions, customers and carry forward to coming generations.

Educational experts say it is high time for the Adivasis to concentrate more on their studies at school and college level while participating in their festivities once in a while without disrupting their studies as education is the only instrument which can change their lives and give them a better life.  

Kanaka Yadavrao, district president of Adivasi JAC, said student’s attendance has fallen to 20 percent in some Tribal Ashram schools during festival seasons in tribal areas at Asifabad, Utnoor, Narnoor, Sirpur (U), Kerameri, Indravelli and some other places in the district.

He found that students who gone to their homes to celebrate Polala which fell on September 13 had not returned to hostels even after celebrating Dasara and Diwali festivals. It is almost two and half months as most of the Adivasi children interested in participating Gussadis.   

Wardens and teachers of Tribal Ashram schools have started visiting Adivasi gudems to take back students to hostels and convincing their parents to send hostels just after Diwali festival but very few students turned up to hostels.

The dropout rate is high and low pass percentage among the Adivasi students of schools and colleges in the district.

Parents are also not sending their children to schools and hostels during festival season.

Adivasis leaders expressed serious concern over poor attendance in Tribal Ashram schools and appealed to the parents not to retain their children at home.

Adivasi elders appealed to the officials of the ITDA, Utnoor to cut the holidays maximum for other festivals which are not important for the Adivasis but give at least ten days holidays for Diwali festival as it was their biggest festival and they can’t celebrate the Diwali festival especially Gussadis without their children.

Adivasis children actively participate in Gussadis and even some of them become Gussadis and visit villages along with their elders during Diwali.

R. Balaji, social researcher, Council for Social Development (CSD), who conducted survey recently in the Tribal Ashram Schools in the district, said the Adivasis children had no minimum knowledge of reading and writing and among them the standards very poor among the students of Kolams, a primitive tribal group, in the district.

‘Adivasi students are not returning to hostels for months who gone to their homes on holidays and there was lack of supervision on the students by the hostel wardens and poor attendance of the students’, observed Balaji.

Eight teams from CSD are conducting survey in the government school and hostels to assess the conditions there and educational standards in the districts.

There are as many as 113 Tribal Ashram Schools and Tribal Welfare hostels, 6 Gurukulams, 13 KGBVS, 4 mini- gurkulams and 905 Government Primary schools (PS) under Tribal Welfare in the District.      

Rice not so 'fine'

Though the state government claims that fine quality rice is being supplied in the midday meal in schools and government hostels, the ground reality is different.

It is true that for the last two months since the scheme began, students were happy with the fine quality rice. But things have changed just after schools reopened.

The coarse rice instead fine quality is being supplied to the hostels and Ashram schools in interior tribal areas due to lack of supervision by the officials.

The rice becomes sticky when cooked unlike fine quality rice and students are complaining of the strong unpleasant smell. It is found that third grade rice is being supplied to the hostels and schools in the name of fine rice.

There are strong allegations that rice millers colluding with some corrupt officials indulging in the fine quality rice scheme.

However, many government teachers working in the interior areas say that ordinary rice in place of fine quality was only supplied for midday meals and hostels in interior areas like Kotapalli, Vemanpalli and Chennur mandals and also in the Agency mandals in the district.  

Doke Bheemkka, mid-day meal worker, at Jagannathpur village in Kagaznagar mandal said the rice being supplied was not tasty and emanated a foul smell, so they returned the coarse rice to the rice distribution point for exchange when students complained over the rice quality.

Another midday meal worker, Kursinga Thonebai of Gond Jhari in Kerameri mandal, said they were getting ordinary rice and there was no taste and smell that one gets from cooked rice.

S. K Sameer, studying in Class IX at the government school in the Adilabad town, the rice supplied was not as tasty (‘Khana taste Nahihai … Dal Pathla Karke Dere..) and the dal was watery.

Some of the teachers working in the tribal ashram schools in Utnoor say that the rice is becomes sticky after cooking though the rice was of fine quality and it  depends on cooking methods and cooks.

Fine quality rice is being diverted to other destinations from the stock points itself and common rice being supplied in place of fine rice.

On the other hand, the area of paddy cultivation has come down in the major rice producing district Karimnagar and Nizmabad due to prolonged drought conditions in the last four Agriculture seasons and the yield has also come down.

Some of the rice millers of Karimnagar shifted their rice mills to bordering Chattisgarh due to high rate of levy on the rice imposed by the state government.  Some of the rice millers allegedly supplied common rice procured from Maharashtra and Chattisgarh in the name of fine quality rice to the schools and hostels.     

According to official sources, fine quality rice is being supplied to 3,850 government schools where 3, 24, 490 students are studying in the district.

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Panels to check diversion