Hyderabad: The urban residential school (URS) in Hyderabad was started in 2010 with the aim of providing education to orphans but has not fulfilled that aim due to the apathy of the state education department.
There are at least 87 Right to Information (RTI) queries filed with the education department seeking information on the use of funds allocated to the school but they have not been answered. This has raised the question of what is being done with the budget allocated for this purpose. In answer to a petition filed before the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), the Commission ordered the district collector to conduct an enquiry and send the report within 20 days.
The URS in Hyderabad is frequently shut down and reopened though it should be functioning throughout the year. Reportedly, the budget for the scheme has been allocated and will be directly deposited in the account of the DEO. However, no one will say what has happened to the amounts allocated since 2010.
Many RTIs were filed to know these details, but these have been ignored.
Sources in the education department, who did not want to be identified, “First the scheme was started in 2010 in two districts in Khammam and Hyderabad. The Khamman UR schools are running well. No one knows what happened to the schools in Hyderabad. Suddenly some students were enrolled in 2017 and some dropped out and they shut down the school stating that it was due to lack of staff.”
The period during which the UR school was running, some temporary staffers were hired. However, their salaries were not paid. As many of them were from Scheduled Caste/Tribes, they approached the SC/ST Commission and got their salaries on the orders of the Commission.
Mr Akshay Kumar, a social activist who filed the petition in the NCPCR, said the Erramanzil Government school had 64 children in 2018, but suddenly this number dropped to 15, and the children were shifted to a private hostel because it was claimed that there was no staff to look after the children. “The minimum basic needs of the children haven't been met. The money which was allocated was swindled,” Mr Kumar says. “There are at least 87 RTI applications filed regarding the same. However, none of them was replied to. We even approached the information commissioner about this,” he added.
When contacted for details of the URS, district education officer B. Venkata Narasamma was unavailable for comment.
Khairatabad corporator P. Vijaya Reddy said, “I have requested the government to continue running the school at Erramanzil as it will be a successful project if implemented properly. I was informed that the enrolment of students was very less and due to the same, they shifted the children to Ameerpet.”
According to a survey conducted by teachers between June 10 and 14 in 2018, there were 87 children in the area who were eligible for the scheme, but they were not encouraged to take admission in the school.
