50,000 Jharkhand children to miss PM’s speech

At least 50,000 school students in Jharkhand will not hear Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech on Teacher’s Day that will be telecast live on September 5, as most rural schools have no TV sets and transistors too are in short supply.

At least 50,000 school students in Jharkhand will not hear Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s speech on Teacher’s Day that will be telecast live on September 5, as most rural schools have no TV sets and transistors too are in short supply.

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The human resources development ministry had directed all schools in the country to show Modi’s speech to students and while schools in urban areas will have no problem in doing that, infrastructure problems mean most schools in far-flung areas will not be able to comply with the order.

“At least 40% students of 3,333 schools of Giridih district might not be able to watch the live telecast of the Prime Minister’s programme,” said deputy commissioner Diprabha Lakra.

Around 42,530 children in Dumka district and over 14,000 students of Latehar district are dependent on radio sets as they have no access to TV signals. Only six of 1,347 schools in Latehar have television sets.

Similarly, Ramgarh additional district program officer Jyoti Khalkho said several students may not be able to watch the PM speak live in his district as most government schools have no TV sets.

In the past few days, district and school authorities have gone for bulk purchases of radio sets to meet the requirement, but there is still a huge shortfall.

District superintendent of education of Dumka, Masudi Tudu, said the department had provided all middle schools with transistors about two years ago but no repair work has since been done.

“We are not sure if these radios are functioning or not. I have directed the headmasters to repair the defunct radio sets immediately,” he added.

That is proving to be a difficult task since radio spare parts are hard to procure.

(With inputs from Vishal Sharma and Brajesh Verma)