Sainik School Kazhakoottam looks for government funds

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: The Union defence secretary, G. Mohan Kumar, visited Sainik School Kazhakoottam (SSK) on Monday, raising hopes of getting more government funding, a longstanding demand. He told the cadets that no other profession could give them dignity, challenge and satisfaction simultaneously other than the armed forces.

"Being a cadet of Sainik School is a great honour, and each one of you should have the aim to become an officer," Mr Kumar, the second defence secretary from Kerala, told the children. Top officials of SSK told DC that they had apprised him of their difficulty in running the school without adequate funds. Currently, money from the reserve fund is being used.

"When there is a total strength of 630 cadets here, there is a facility for dormitory only for 475 students. We are running the school with limited facilities and already few of the projects to have a running track have been delayed due to varied reasons," said a top SSK official.

For quite some time SSK has been demanding to both State and Union governments for more funds. In 2013, Rs 1 crore worth of  central defence funds towards SSK had been cut. Later in 2014 coinciding with the 44th All India Sainik School Principals Conference, minister of state for defence, Rao Inderjit Singh, announced setting up of six more schools, but the local Sainik School did not get anything.

At the same time P.K. Sankaran Kutty, a social activist and a resident, demanded that an Armed Forces Medical College should be set up on the 330-acre campus. Mr Kutty said that Union defence department had taken a decision that another medical college on the lines of AFMC, Pune, be set up somewhere in the country.

He said SSK required only a maximum of 50 acres to run the school. But school authorities and Old Boys Association expressed unhappiness over this recommendation as they maintained that it would eventually lead to SSK itself being ejected out from the campus.