Thiruvananthapuram: From now, every Saturday at 4.30 am, Radhakrishnan Nair, a retired Customs official, will board a bus from Adoor in Pathanamthitta to Government Central High School, Attakkulangara, to train the district’s first Customs Cadet Corps. The batch of 27 students selected on Friday is also one of the first in India to become customs cadets. The first-ever Customs Cadet Corps in the country was launched by Cochin Customs House at Marad Mangai Government HSS in Ernakulam last year.
This year, new batches were introduced at four other schools in Kochi. Next week, the programme will be introduced at a government school in Karaparamba. The programme could make palpable changes in the children within the single year that it was launched, according to Customs commissioner K.N. Raghavan. He was at the school on Friday to meet headmistress Yamuna Devi. “The students at Marad look more confident. Many private schools have approached us for the same programme. But our focus is on government schools,” Mr Raghavan said.
In a few years, the programme is likely to be launched in schools outside the state. They have sought funds from the Central government. “The customs officials are contributing through the Recreation Club as well as individually. Though we have sought funds, it will be used as the seed money. The programme should be run using contributions from officials to ensure their involvement,” he added. Otherwise, it will become just another bureaucratic exercise,” Raghavan told this newspaper. Of the 27 chosen, six are girls. What was tested was their will to undergo the rigorous three-hour-training.
