North body orders 6,000 desks for its schools from Tihar Jail

New Delhi: The North Delhi Municipal Corporation will procure desks for its school students made by inmates from Tihar Jail’s ‘furniture section.’ This will help

New Delhi: The North Delhi Municipal Corporation will procure desks for its school students made by inmates from Tihar Jail’s ‘furniture section.’ This will help many students who usually have to sit on floor mats, even during winters. An order for 6,000 dual desks (for two students) has been placed with the central jail and will be delivered soon, north corp officials said.

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At 714, the north body has the largest number of municipality schools under its fold in the city, of all civic bodies. These are located in areas like Karol Bagh, Rohini, Narela, Wazirpur, Ashok Vihar, etc. Together, their student strength is 2.96 lakh.

The civic body was unable to replace broken benches since a long time due to paucity of funds. HT had reported on problems faced by students who no option but to sit on the floor in July this year.

“We hope to receive the 6,000 dual desks from Tihar in three months. If these turn out to be in satisfactory condition, we will purchase many more from the central jail factory,” said North body mayor Avtar Singh.

“We decided to go for Tihar Jail’s proposal for two reasons – First, this will support a good cause, which is the livelihood of prisoners; and second, they are providing us the benches at a reasonable rate lesser than that in the open market,” said Jai Prakash, north body’s standing committee chairperson.

A senior official of the education department said making purchases from Tihar also rules out scope for corruption. “Since the pay cheque will go to Tihar directly, there will be no scope for middlemen,” she said.