More than 1,000 govt schools in Assam don't have electricity: Govt

GUWAHATI: In a digital era, over 1,100 government schools, mostly elementary, are functioning without electricity, the state government informed the state assembly on Thursday.
There are over 50,000 government-run schools in the state, from elementary to senior secondary level.
In a question by the leader of the opposition, Debabrata Saikia, education minister Ranoj Pegu informed the house that, precisely, 1,097 elementary-level schools and 10 secondary schools do not have electricity connections. The minister said most of these elementary schools have been allocated RIDF (Rural Infrastructure Development Fund) and it is expected that all the schools will have power supply by January 2023.
The minister also stated that 2,979 elementary schools have single-teachers, while 15,161 schools of the same category are being managed by two teachers each. Altogether 8,207 elementary schools have three teachers each. Pegu informed the house that there were no secondary-level schools with such a low count of teachers. Contrary to the scenario of single-teacher schools, the state government said there have been 2,916 elementary schools that have more than seven teachers each. The number of high schools and higher secondary schools with more than seven teachers each were 4,129.
As per a notification issued by the education department earlier this month, the district inspector of schools and district elementary education officers were asked to ascertain the number of teachers and tutors vis a vis the pupil teacher ratio. The effort was taken to rationalize the number of teachers by shifting the teachers from the schools with excess teachers to those with deficit teachers.
Quoting the Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) 2021-22 findings, Pegu informed that 3,117 schools do not have toilet facilities for boys, whereas 1,693 lack toilets for girls. Most of these schools also belong to the elementary standards.
On the other hand, 1,124 schools in Assam do not have proper drinking water, of which 1,066 are elementary and 58 are secondary-level schools.