HYDERABAD: Residential schools run by Telangana Residential Educational Institutions Society (TREIS) are in a poor state. TREIS was set up in 1971 during the tenure of PV Narsimha Rao as Education minister, with its first school in Sarvail in Nalgonda district which is now regarded as a benchmark.
Over the years, TREIS grew into hundreds of schools that were later split between Residential Educational Institutions Societies for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, other Backward Castes and minorities. At present, TREIS has 35 schools across Telangana in which about 18,000 students study.
Inadequate space
Students are cramped in dormitories to sleep at night due to inadequate space. Moreover, no cots, beds or bedsheets are provided and students sleep on the floor.There is such dearth of classrooms that when last year, the schools were provided with new benches, many of them could not accommodate all of them in the classrooms due to lack of space.Of the 35 schools, 11 schools have no compound wall, putting safety of the students in danger. The requirement for constructing minimum required infrastructure in the schools as per official sources is about Rs 300 crores.
Till now only Rs 79 crores have been sanctioned for TREIS that too under rural infrastructure development fund loan by NABARD, which has been trickling in. Telangana government has sanctioned only Rs 30 crore last year and Rs 7.5 crore this year for the development of infrastructure. An annual maintenance grant of Rs 2 crore was provided by the government last year. Quality of education is also hampered. For the last 19 years, there have been no recruitment. Of about 720 sanctioned teacher positions, only 200 are filled with permanent faculty. It is being hoped that 313 faculty and 14 posts of principal will be filled through TSPSC this year.
A TREIS official said, “TREIS is the mother body of residential educational institutions which has been completely ignored by the state government. Other residential educational societies which came up later receive up to Rs 1,000 crore under various schemes from state and Union governments. Students there get amenities like school uniforms, free notebooks, trousers, shoes and higher amount for cosmetic charges which our students do not get.”
Legacy
Ironically, schools run by TREIS have been facing neglect by Telangana government have a legacy of producing hundreds of civil servants many of whom are presently serving the state government including Hyderabad commissioner of police M Mahendar Reddy, Tourism department secretary B Venkatesham, finance secretary K Ramakrishna Rao, Suryapet collector Surendra Mohan and MD of TSPHCL B Malla Reddy.