Budget & aided schools struggling with the cost of sanitization
The trustee of a school managing a Marathi medium school has said that we get a salary grant from the state government. Which means that the fees cannot be charged from the students at all.
Nagpur: As the initial excitement of school reopening subsides, The financial reality of following every single cleanliness SOP is giving a tough competition to many schools, Well aided schools and also known as ‘budget’ schools, He is currently struggling to spend the money to clean the premises as per the guidelines given.
The trustee of a school managing a Marathi medium school has said that we get a salary grant from the state government. Which means that the fees cannot be charged from the students at all. No additional grant is coming at all for the work related to coronavirus. Then how do we fund it?
The trustee has expressed a desire not to be identified, lest he has to face criticism from the authorities of education. The trustee has said that in the year 2020, when they all reopened for the first time, then some schools got 5 liters of sanitizer cans free of cost. In rural areas this used to come from Zilla Parishad funds and in the city, it was probably done through several NGOs. But it always happens, we start with all the facilities but with time we forget everything.
School Cleaning Cost
It is very necessary for these schools to clean the entire campus every day. Which includes the chairs and benches used by all the students. As in the previous practice, the washroom should be cleaned and not just cleaned.
A school principal has said that in the year 2020, when Tukaram Munde was the commissioner of the city of Nagpur, We used to have a webinar in which various issues were discussed. And in that, a principal asked him whether the cost of cleaning the school would be borne by the government or not, and Munde had not committed any funding at all. And in fact, as I remember it, they said very clearly that the cost of sanitation is not high, so it can be easily managed by these schools.
They ‘manage’ the problem, the schools say. The principal of a Hindi medium school in North Nagpur said that we cannot collect the fees. How, then, will we fund the cost of daily sanitation?
The principal has said that the salary of my teacher is paid by the government but not many are coming for cleanliness. We ourselves collect the money and do the cleaning, but then it is done only in the classrooms and not the entire campus.
Also Read: Nagpur Municipal Corporation proposes 5-fold hike in school rent from December 2018
