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Fund crunch drives school heads in Ludhiana to knock the doors of philanthropists
Due to fund crunch, principals and the school heads in Ludhiana are seemingly in the race to generate funds for their respective schools with the help of local panchayats, philanthropists or else they knock the doors of the prominent industrialists in the district using their influential contacts
Government schools in the district have no choice left but to woo the non-government organisations or the private companies for raising funds for construction of school buildings in absence of allocation of required funds by the state education department.
Principals and the school heads are seemingly in the race to generate funds for their respective schools with the help of local panchayats, philanthropists or else they knock the doors of the prominent industrialists in the district using their influential contacts.
In absence of the funds, the schools have to either teach the students in dilapidated school buildings or make them sit on the cold floors under open sky.
In the worst scenario, the school heads even arrange the drinking facilities, fans, toilets, refrigerators, etc in the schools with the courtesy of the philanthropists.
NRIs, private players lend a helping hand
Private players, including Vardhman, Round Table India, Kangaroo, etc are helping the schools to construct the buildings or to buy infrastructure where schools’ heads are not getting much help from the government or the education department.
Now, the non-resident Indians are further sharing the burden of the state government by donating in lakhs for the construction of the smart schools in their native villages.
The government schools in Giaspura, Barewal, Sekhewal, Jahangirpur, Chhawani Mohalla, Barmalipur, PAU etc have been constructed with the donations from the private players.
“The education minister in Punjab boasts about revamping and renaissance of the education system in the state along with construction of smart schools. The reality is that the teachers, especially the school heads, literally beg for grants from the influential people as appropriate grants are never released by the education department even for the construction of the classrooms according to the ratio of the pupils,” a school principal said.
Shockingly in Giaspura High School, out of total 26 rooms, grants for mere six rooms were allotted by the education department and rest of the 20 rooms were built by Vardhman and Round Table India companies, an official said.
Similarly, most of the funds for the construction of the school and infrastructure at Giaspura Primary School were paid by these companies.
Students, studying under the tattered roofs of classrooms in Government Primary School, Jahangirpur, despite construction of the new fancy classrooms in the new under-construction school building have no option but to study in the old school building.
Apart from the new school struggling to get the funds for the boundary walls to be built around the newly constructed classrooms, no funds are left for the construction of the toilets.
“IOL Pharmaceuticals has so far donated over three lakhs for the school furniture. Moreove,r we have requested them to help us in constructing the boundary walls in the school now. The grant released to us by the department was completely used in construction of six class rooms and now we are taking financial help from IOL and local panchayat,” an official in the department said.
Meanwhile, as many as 25 NRIs have changed the picture of Government Middle School, Barmalipur, by donating over half-a-crore for the construction of its new building
Defending the prevailing scenario, a senior education officer said since the government builds many schools in the state, the grants for each school cannot be released together as the funds’ allocation needs to be divided. “There is definitely a crunch of funds with the government but still the important funds are allocated on an urgent basis by the state department. It is good if people come forward to help in construction of the schools,” an officer said.
