NEW DELHI: The South Delhi Municipal Corporation is in talks with some corporate houses to work jointly on public-private partnership (PPP)?education projects and provide it expertise on its "terms", a top official said.
"Yes, we are in talks with a few corporate houses. And, we are trying to rope them in as partners in our education projects, so that they can bring in their expertise to the board. But, we want them to provide services to us on our terms and not on their (companies) terms," Chairman of Education Committee of SDMC Ashish Sood said.
He said the corporate houses now have to spend a part of their earnings on Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and, therefore the companies would be interested in working with us.
"We are in touch with these companies and the modalities are being worked out. We are sending out feelers and those interested in working with us, on our terms, will join as, as we see it," he said.
The decision to go big on the PPP front comes after SDMC's recent education campaign 'Neev', where the municipal body enrolled over 12,000 underprivileged children living in the national capital, in its schools.
The over fortnight-long campaign ran from June 14 to June 30, involved a door-to-door survey, which was carried with the support of over 400 municipal schoolteachers and about 300 volunteers from about 10 NGOs.
Incidentally, number of girls enrolled in all the four zones of the south corporation outnumbered boys.
A total of 5,118 boys and 6,932 girls were enrolled during the campaign in its Central, South, West and Najafgarh Zones, the SDMC said.
According to Sood, there are about 600 schools under the SDMC's jurisdiction.
"We have not been able to complete work in some schools during the summer vacations. But action will be taken against officials if found guilty," he said.
The main emphasis of the campaign, according to SDMC, was on girl child, children of construction workers and children with special needs.
Sood hopes that with private players entering the civic field in this sector, it will expedite work and reduce scope for laxity.
He also said that the civic body was working on constituting a social audit committee to oversee its education work.