NALGONDA: The school for the blind, located at Nalgonda, which has been running for the last 23 years under the Development and Welfare Association of Blind (DWAB), will be closed from the next academic year due to financial constraints.
The school, started in the year 1999, was catering to the needs of blind students from across the State without discriminating over caste, religion, age, and gender.
The DWAB had initially started the facility for ten students at a small rented house and later converted it into a full-fledged residential school. The school provided free education, boarding, and lodging with financial and moral support from several organisers. Subsequently, the association constructed a three-storey building named Surdas Bhavan at Gollaguda Street in Nalgonda.
From the beginning, the school depended on donors. The association would also receive financial support from the State and Central governments. The Central government had sanctioned a monthly grant of `2000 per student, but the amount was not released regularly. The school would receive the amount depending on the availability of funds. For this reason, the association had to take loans from private financiers to keep the school running. “Over the past two years, the Centre has not released a single penny for the school,” said one of the organisers of the school.
Facing financial difficulties, the association had first proposed to hand over the school to the State government. However, after getting no response from the authorities, the association finally decided to shut down the facility.
Ponugoti Chokka Rao, one of the school organisers told TNIE that the Central government had failed to release grants for the last two years. “Thus, the association was unable to run it any further,” he said, while thanking the donors who had helped them run the school earlier.