HYDERABAD: The state government will start 60 residential schools for minority students from the next academic year. Chanchalguda jail and Race Course would be shifted from the city and the space would be used for starting residential schools for minority students.
At a review meeting held here on Saturday, chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao directed the officials to shift the jail and race course. Of the 60 residential schools to be started from the next academic year, 30 would be for boys and another 30 for girl students. Rao directed the officials to start recruiting teaching and non-teaching staff for these residential schools.
In the first year, the residential schools would be run in rented houses and permanent buildings would be constructed in the second year. As the number of minority students are high in Hyderabad, huge extents of lands were required for constructing the buildings. Hence, the chief minister directed the officials to shift Race Course and Chanchalguda jail and use the same place for constructing buildings for minority residential schools.
Rao directed the officials to introduce Urdu as an optional language in these schools. However, the medium of instruction in minority schools should be English only. The minority residential schools would be run like the existing SC residential schools, Rao said.
Rao also directed the officials to start new self-employment schemes for minority youths. He also instructed the officials to come with special programme to extend financial help to hawkers and vendors belonging to minority community.
These hawkers and vendors were borrowing money at huge interest rates and suffering a lot financially, he said. The chief minister said that 12 per cent Muslim minorities and two per cent other minorities in the state were in abject poverty. “There is every need to bring a change in their living standards,” Rao felt. The literacy rate, especially among Muslims, was very less and the dropout rate was very high.