Srinagar, July 24: The Department of School Education and Literacy (DSEL), Government of India (GoI) has asked the J&K’s School Education Department to surrender all the school buildings which await execution over the past many years.
These school buildings were sanctioned under the different centrally-sponsored schemes to upgrade the infrastructure standards in the government schools.
However, the construction work on most of the school buildings was not taken up which resulted in construction escalation of the projects and delayed execution of work.
As per the official figures, since the implementation of the erstwhile SSA scheme now Samagra Shiksha in J&K around 68,000 school buildings besides additional classrooms and computer laboratories were sanctioned for the schools up to elementary level.
Of the total sanctioned buildings, work on more than 10,084 school buildings is yet to be taken up by the School Education Department for the past more than a decade.
Also, around 4019 school buildings were sanctioned under Samagra as strengthening components for secondary level schools.
But given the poor performance of the J&K government, work on 1470 buildings is yet to be taken.
The buildings sanctioned as strengthening components were supposed to provide additional classroom facilities to the schools to encourage the enrollment of students. But the department has failed to show any progress in this regard due to which the students continue to suffer for want of adequate accommodation in schools.
Secretary Education and Literacy (SEL) DSEL, GoI recently asked the School Education Department to surrender all those buildings on which the construction work was yet to be taken up.
The official document available with Greater Kashmir states that J&K government was asked to take up the pending civil works on priority and also advised to surrender those infrastructures items approved earlier before 2015- 16 which could not be completed till date.
“J&K is requested to update pending civil works and proposals in this regard for surrendering the items which were not taken up till date and may be sent to the Ministry of Education (MoE),” the official document reads.
J&K was also asked to take up the pending works on priority and fix a timeline for completion of all pending civil works.
“The details of works approved under erstwhile SSA and RMSA and not taken up till March 2019-20 should be worked out and a proposal for surrendering of these works be submitted to the Ministry of Education, GoI,” the document reads.
Meanwhile, J&K government has defended the delay in execution of works and stated that the pending civil works were put to execution through the engineering divisions of the School Education Department (SED) and most of the works had been either completed during the current year while some were at different stages of construction.
“The ongoing construction will be completed by the end of the current financial year. The details of works approved under erstwhile SSA and RMSA which could not be taken up for execution till 2019-20 are being authenticated from the field agencies,” the document reads.
It further said that J&K government has stated that once the updated information was received and compiled, the proposal for surrendering of the not taken up works would be submitted to the Ministry of Education, Gol.