ROURKELA: The ST/SC Development department on Wednesday, August 11, 2021, initiated steps to provide pre-matric scholarship to government schools that are struggling to run ST/SC hostels in absence of funds.
The move comes a day after TNIE published a news report titled ‘Schools reopen in Odisha but no money to run ST/SC hostels’ highlighting the Catch-22 situation of school authorities who are under compulsion to run the hostels but the available resources are too meagre.
In WhatsApp messages to the welfare officers of all districts, the department asked them to immediately furnish information regarding Classes IX and X ST/SC boarders’ strength of schools so that pre-matric scholarship amount can be processed to the accounts of headmasters at the State level. Sources in Sundargarh district welfare office said the data was sought by 2 pm and with much efforts, relevant information was submitted to the department. The scholarship amount is yet to be released to schools having hostels run by the department across Odisha.
An unprecedented crisis arose after the scholarship amount for April, May and June this year was directly deposited in bank accounts of students or parents due to the closure of hostels for Covid-19. However, after partial resumption of schools, the amount was not placed with respective schools. Sundargarh has 13,904 ST/SC boarders in Classes IX and X of 40 high schools under ST/SC Development department and 94 under the School and Mass Education department.
After the State government reopened schools for Class X from July 26, almost all ST/SC students have returned to hostels. As physical classes for Class IX are to be resumed from August 16, school authorities were worried about the situation turning unmanageable with the return of Class IX students. Usually, the scholarship amount is placed with the respective school’s bank account to meet mess expenditure including for rice, lentils, vegetables, non-vegetarian items, spices and fuel cost. In absence of the scholarship fund, school authorities were forced to borrow and use personal resources to run the hostels.