While half of the academic session is about to complete in schools, the education department has failed to distribute uniforms among students in all the districts across Kashmir.
Greater Kashmir earlier reported about the delay indistribution of the schools uniforms wherein the authorities had claimed tostart the distribution process from May 20. However, very few education zonesin some districts have distributed uniforms among the students.
This year the department has outsourced the procurement ofuniforms to J&K handloom department due to which it took two months forthem to finalize technical specifications before placing the orders.
“The decision to outsource the purchase of uniform was takenafter Government of India raised objections over the previous process,” anofficial said.
However, the school heads from various districts informedGreater Kashmir that they didn’t receive uniforms for school children. “Theschools are making preparation for holding Term-I exams and the department isyet to provide the uniforms. The current academic session will end after fourmonths,” said one of the school heads.
Meanwhile, the local proprietors of cloth mills said themanaging director handloom department has given the contract for procurement ofschool uniforms to outside firms while ignoring the local firms.
“This is sheer injustice with us. How can the departmentignore local mills and drain money out of the state,” said one of the firmowners registered with handloom department. They said the uniform procurementand distribution was to be done by power loom sector instead of handloom. “Butthe authorities are violating the norms by involving the handloom sector init,” the local firm owners said.
State project director Samagra Shiksha, Arun Kumar Manhas,said they have distributed the school uniforms in Srinagar, Leh and otherdistricts. “The distribution process is going on and all the districts will becovered by June ending. Later, we will shift to Jammu division,” he said.
In 2015, the government had issued orders that no departmentwill purchase textile items from suppliers other than the J&K statehandloom development corporation (HDC).
“Some departments are violating the government orders andpurchase textile items from outside suppliers. Such violations have been viewedseriously by government,” reads the order issued by secretary financedepartment in 2015.
Managing Director Handloom department meanwhile said theprocurement and distribution of uniforms was going on smoothly and people whoare complaining want to disrupt the process.