Students lambast

• FAST (proposed norms)
• Fee to be deposited directly into eligible students’ accounts
• Biometric system for attendance in colleges proposed
• 75 per cent attendance and 50 per cent marks without any backlogs is mandatory to avail the scheme
• Full reimbursement will not be made

Hyderabad: The move by the government to directly deposit fees into students’ accounts under Financial Assistance to Students of Telangana (FAST) scheme has evoked strong criticism from the student community. Students felt that the move is creating more problems for the students.

According to sources, the government will cut down the link between the colleges and the government. Earlier, the government reimbursed fees directly to the colleges and not to students. But the Telangana government is planning to deposit the fee directly into an eligible student’s bank account. This means that the student has to first pay fees to the college and the government would later deposit it in his/her account.

“Fee reimbursement was started for financially assisting students from economically poor ground. If the government goes ahead with the norms, how will students pay fees at the time of the admission. Even if they go for loans to pay college fees, is the government ready to pay the interest for the amount that a student had borrowed from the bank?” questioned Krishank, research scholar, Osmania University.

G Sankeerth, an MBA student from OU says, “Procedures say that a student has to pay fees to the college immediately after taking an admission. As many students may not be able to afford the fee, the government has to come up with provisions so that students can pay the fee at the end of the academic year rather than at the time of the admission.”

In a bid to weed out fake students and bogus engineering colleges from the State, the Telangana government is contemplating strict guidelines based on the task force report submitted to engineering colleges for providing financial assistance under the FAST scheme.

The way in which the government is formulating norms, not only makes Andhra Pradesh students ineligible for the scheme, but also hampers the careers of students of Telangana. It is learnt that the committee which was formed to formulate guidelines has proposed biometric system for the attendance in the colleges and these machines are connected to the universities.

The committee also proposed that 75 per cent attendance, 50 per cent marks without any backlogs are mandatory to avail the scheme. The government is also not promising full reimbursement to all the candidates, the differential has to be paid by the students.

This has raised serious questions from the student community. “What’s the government motive behind not reimbursing the total amount to students? How will a student from the poor background benefit from the scheme? Seems like the government wants to corner all the Seemandhra-owned colleges in the State by making stronger norms thereby affecting thousands of AP students and Telangana students as well,” said K Srikanth, a student of CVSR college. It is learnt that committee which formulated the norms for the scheme is yet to get chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao’s nod.