Hyderabad: With the Telangana government looking to turn government schools into digital schools, electricity has become a major problem.
Many government schools don’t have electricity as they fail to pay bills on time due to high tariffs and insufficient funds. Bafflingly, government schools are considered as commercial enterprises and the tariff is quite high.
The TS education ministry has asked TS Transco and discoms not to categorise schools as commercial units. These schools are currently being charged at Rs 6.90 per unit of electricity.
“This is one of the reasons government schools are not properly maintained. They spend all their money paying electricity bills or default most of the times. Many schools don’t have electricity for several days due to this,” a senior school education department official said.
TS School Education commissioner T. Chiranjeevulu said that the department was negotiating with power discoms to change the tariff. Currently, schools are given only Rs 1,000, for maintenance. There are proposals to increase this as well. Private schools are also charged commercial rates but the burden is passed on to the parents.
