MDM cooking cost to reach students through DBT mode
Nishikant Khajuria
JAMMU, Mar 29: To ensure that students and their parents may not suffer more at this time of crisis because of the ongoing lockdown in the wake of COVID-19 threat, the Department of School Education in Jammu and Kashmir has decided to prevent all the private schools from hiking any fee or collecting the same till April 30.
Official sources told the Excelsior that a formal order in this regard is likely to be issued by tomorrow thus providing much relief to the parents who were purportedly being pressurized by the schools to submit annual fee online in the bank accounts of the institutions.
Further, in view of the closure of schools due to COVID-19 outbreak, the Department of School Education has started home classes and is also providing two-month advance dry ration to the eligible children through the Department of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs while cooking cost of Mid-Day Meal shall reach to the students through DBT mode for which the Chief Education Officers have been directed to submit bank account details of the students/their parents within 10 days.
“In this hour of crisis, private schools across J&K should desist from any fees hike from parents/kids,” tweeted Principal Secretary, School Education Department, Dr Asgar Hassan Samoon today, in apparent response to the complaints in this regard.
When contacted, he told the Excelsior that private schools associations in Jammu as well as in Kashmir have also announced to support such a decision by the department and other States like neighbouring Himachal Pradesh have already taken similar measures.
“We are at it; schools will have to defer collection of fee from students at least till April 30 and there shall be no fee enhancement for which necessary orders may be issued,” said Dr Samoon while maintaining that the current circumstances present a huge challenge for the entire society and our priority should be to ease the situation and not create any kind of hurdles.
He further informed that all the CBSE schools in Jammu and Kashmir shall also come under the ambit of such order as education is in concurrent list and these educational institutions function within the Union Territory of J&K and under the Constitution of India.
Furthering informing that School Education Department has also decided to provide two-month advance dry ration to the eligible children through the Department of Food, Civil Supplies and Consumer Affairs, Dr Samoon said that all the Chief Education Officers have been directed to submit bank account details of eligible students/ under parents within ten -days for crediting the cooking cost of Mid-Day Meal Scheme directly to them via Direct Benefit Transfer mode.
“Two-month advance dry ration (rice) is being distributed among the eligible 886905 children (Primary 584387) and (Upper Primary 302518) in all districts of J&K for which 4700.76 mt tonnes of food grains for 1st quarter of 2020-21 has already been approved by Mid-Day Meal Directorate,” said Dr Samoon and added that the initiative taken on the direction of Lt Governor G C Murmu would continue till the situation returns to normal.
Pertinent to mention that Mid-Day Meal scheme is aimed to improve the nutritional status of the children from classes I to VIII besides encouraging poor children to attend more regularly. According to the scheme, every child enrolled in the primary class is provided a free supply of 100 grams of food grains per day and 150 grams are provided to every child of Upper Primary. The Scheme has also a provision to spent Rs 4.48 for cooking purposes for every child of Primary level per day and Rs 6.71 for every Upper Primary level child per day.
Mission Director, Mid-Day Meal scheme, Dr Arun Manhas said they have received good response from CEOs and already more than 60 percent of bank account details of students have been submitted to the Directorate. “We are completing the account collection process within the stipulated time,” he said.
Meanwhile, due to closure of schools in view of COVID-19 threat, the Directorate of School Education, Jammu, has also initiated `DSEJ Home Classes’ as a single platform accessible to students.
Special lectures, being recorded by subject experts of School Education Department, are being made available on the department website www.schedujammu.nic.in under Students Corner. Moreover the subject experts have shared their contact numbers through which they can be directly contacted by the students/parents for any queries related to the topic.
Further , a Telegram channel has also been created as DSE Jammu Online Home classes, which can be accessed on the link https://t.me/joinchat/ AAAAAE5sRvX9TGVHIAXLJg. The same channel is also available on official website of DSEJ and students can subscribe to this channel through Smartphone having Telegram App.
Director School Education Jammu, Anuradha Gupta has instructed all CEOs, Principals DIET and ZEOs to ensure that all reputed teachers in their districts/zones come forward to contribute in this endeavour. Further, all heads of schools shall involve teachers of their respective institute to create WhatsApp/telegram groups of students/parents, wherever possible, for providing them recorded lessons. In case students don’t have smart phones, they shall be contacted on the phone numbers available with the teachers and asked to study chapters of all subjects as per calendar from their text books. Problems and queries of such students shall be either clarified on phone or when the class work resumes. The students shall also be given home assignments and asked to do exercises given at the end of all chapters.
All the Joint Directors have been designated as Nodal Officers for DSEJ Home Classes and shall be responsible for its smooth functioning by taking daily feedback and ensuring active participation of all concerned officers and teachers.
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