CHENNAI: Working towards addressing the challenges faced by children from tribal areas in accessing formal education, the Tribal Welfare Department is planning to launch a pilot initiative to provide micro vans to four schools on Kalvarayan Hills of Kallakurichi district.
In tribal areas, children have to trek several kilometres through hills and forests to reach the schools due to the lack of transport facilities. This also leads to high dropout rates among the students, leaving them vulnerable to child labour.
The microvan initiative aims to provide much-needed transport to children studying in classes 1 to 5.
According to Tribal Welfare Department officials, the facility will first be launched at schools in Maniyarpalayam, Ezhuthur, Kottaputhur and Innadu.
Around 800 students are studying in primary classes in these four schools. While Maniyarpalayam and Kottaputhur have higher secondary schools, Ezhuthur and Innadu have middle school and primary school respectively. The students from these hamlets located on Kalvarayan Hills at present have to walk distances up to 8 km to reach schools.
“We plan to launch the service by February and people from the same locality will be appointed as drivers. The vans will also be utilised for delivering welfare measures and responding to emergencies in tribal areas,” said an official. Based on the results, the initiative will be expanded to other areas.
A recent survey conducted by the department revealed that over 70% of children in the hamlets in Kalvarayan Hills walk at least one kilometre to reach their school.
This distress, coupled with comparatively limited awareness on education, has led to about 35% of the total population not receiving formal education.
The families here are also economically poor with more than 75% of the people working as farmhands and earning less than `5,000 per month. Furthermore, 7.5% of the people migrate to neighbouring states for three to six months annually in search of work.