Septuagenarian ex-teacher still awaiting provincialization

A CORRESPONDENT

BOKO: Brindaban Lower Primary School, a 35-year-old institute which is situated along the Assam-Meghalaya border in Makoibari village in the Lumpi area under Boko LAC, is still not provincialized.

Now, children of the area have to walk 2 to 6 kilometers to the Bhanubhakta Lower Primary School in Lower Lumpi for their education. It may be mentioned that Lumpi and the nearby villages are still under a very remote area in the Boko LAC. The Brindaban LP School was established in 1987 by Om Prakash Shirish (75) and he taught in the school till 1992. Later, his son Arjun Shirish Magar taught in the school but he was transferred to the Bhanubhakta LP School as tutorial teacher two years ago.

Om Prakash Shirish is sad at the state of affairs and said that he still visits his school and teaches some students. The school used to have 30-50 students at one time and many of them are now in government service. If the State Government wants to provincialize the school then it will be very easy because two bighas of land has already been sanctioned from the Boko Revenue Circle in Makoibari village for the LP school. However, due to the unknown reasons the school has still not been provincialized.

Shirish added that the Central RTE Rules (The Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (RTE) Act, 2009) had notified the area or limits of neighbourhood to factor in distance norms one kilometer for children in classes I-V, where the distance between Brindaban LP School to Bhanubhakta LP School is around two kilometers. Now the problem arises that the children from Dharampur, Umarchiang, Makoibari villages have to walk 4 to 8 kilometers to attend their school which is the Bhanubhakta LP School.

Local villagers are now requesting the State Government, especially the Chief Minister, to provincialize the Brindaban LP School in the interest of the local children. Due to the hilly terrain, long distance and bad weather conditions, many a time children fail to attend the school which affects their studies. They also said that higher officials, ministers and MLAs had visited the Brindaban LP School several times and promised to provincialize the school, but that has not happened.

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