Schools will witness sea change in near future: Jagadish Reddy

Nalgonda: Energy Minister G Jagadish Reddy said that Chief Minister K Chandrasekhar Rao came up with "Mana Ooru - Mana Badi, Mana Basti-Mana Badi" programme to strengthen the government schools across with providing infrastructure the State.

The Minister participated in a district-level coordination review meeting with public representatives and officials on the "Mana Ooru-Mana Badi, Mana Basti-Mana Badi" programme at the Collectorate.

Speaking on the occasion, he said there will be a sea change in the condition of government schools across the State. In the first phase, as many as 517 schools in the district will be strengthened by providing infrastructure through the "Mana Ooru-Mana Badi, Mana Basti-Mana Badi" programme in Nalgonda district.

He said the State government would take steps to strengthen the public schools instead of private ones.

He said the Mana Ooru-Mana Badi, Mana Badi-Mana Basti programme would be implemented in three phases to make all government schools across the State equipped with state-of-the-art facilities and added that as much as Rs 7,289 crore has been allocated by the government.

As part of the first phase, a massive programme has been launched to further improve the infrastructure of 9,123 (35 per cent) public schools in primary, secondary and tertiary schools in every zone across the State at a cost of Rs 3,497.62 crore

He said the government has approved 12 components in the Mana Ooru-Mana Badi and Mana Basti-Mana Badi programmes which include removing dilapidated rooms in government schools and replacing them with new ones, erecting retaining walls, kitchen sheds, constructing dining halls in high schools, constructing toilets with drinking water facility, water facility, painting buildings, repairing and arranging furniture as required.

The government has decided to set up proper electrification and digital devices to the schools, the Minister said.

He said 35 per cent of schools would be developed in each district by the end of the 2021-22 academic year.

He said as a part of the process of identifying the schools with the highest number of students in the towns and mandals will be done followed by development. In this connection, a single agency will be set up for each zone to work for this.

He said the agencies should make estimates of the works to be done in the identified schools in the first year and have to submit the report to the Collector.

The Collector, Additional Collector, ZP Chairman, MLAs and other people's representatives were directed to conduct field inspections to ascertain whether the works identified in the schools across the district were in order or not.

He said plans should be prepared to look into the proposals given by the authorities at the field level.The Minister said he would conduct a surprise inspection himself once the plans were ready and works will begin.

The district Collector will give administrative sanctions of the work to be undertaken in each school.

The Minister said the programme would be implemented under the auspices of the school management committee.

Each school management committee is required to open two bank accounts, with one account crediting government funds to school expenses and the other contributing donations from the public, alumni, educators, donors, and others.

The details of these accounts should be put before the public from time to time to get more donations from others.

The Minister suggested that the people, NRIs and alumni should be made partners in this programme.

He said if anybody donates Rs 2 lakh, will be made as members of the school committee. Also, on donation of more than Rs 10 lakh in the school should be named after the donor or the name suggested by the donor. In this programme, ZP Chairman Banda Narender Reddy, Collector Prashanth Jeevan Patil, Addition Collector (Local Bodies) Rahul Sharma, MLC Koti Reddy, MLAs Bhagath Kumar, Ravindra Kumar, SP Rema Raieshwari and others participated.