BENGALURU: Teachers have started visiting hamlets of Soliga tribes in K Gudi forests in BR Hills, Chamarajanagar district, to engage children in academic activities.
This comes after TOI published a report — Pandemic derails education of children from tribal community — in these columns on December 18, 2020, highlighting the ordeal of at least 70 students belonging to the tribal community and living in K Gudi. They were deprived of online classes due to mobile network issues.
Following the report, the department of public instruction issued a notice and swung into action. The department’s assistant project coordinator visited the villages and spoke to parents and children living in these forested areas. There are about 38 tribal hamlets in the area.
ST Javaregowda, deputy director of public instruction, Chamarajanagar, told TOI they received a notice from the department of public instruction and tried to contact parents via phone, but it did not work. “Our teachers then visited the hamlets and spoke to the children. They have given books to the kids and will be visiting them regularly. These teachers are also giving them home assignments and creating awareness about classes that are telecast on television. Special focus will be on students who are in class 10,” said Javaregowda.
According to locals and forest officials, till date, no Covid-19 case has been reported in these hamlets. Shivanna, father of Sridevi, a student from one of the villages, said teachers came and handed over books and gave assignments to the children. “Our children have picked up books after eight months,” he said. There are 70 students like Sridevi, aged between 6 and 16, belonging to the Soliga tribe in 38 hamlets in K Gudi region. None has attended classes of any sort after the lockdown was lifted.
Students have to travel 10km by bus to attend classes at the nearest government school. For mobile network and internet, they have to travel 5km, braving possible attacks by animals, to reach an elevated spot. Many of them were not aware of classes being telecast on television.