Quality education in State still doubtful: Women commission

By our Staff Reporter

Guwahati, February 17: “Though the mainstream schools of the state are providing standard education to the children under the Right to Education (RTE) Act, imparting quality education is still under doubt,” said Runimi Gogoi, chairperson in-charge, Assam State Commission for Protection of Child Rights.

Assam has 85 per cent of rural population against 75 per cent tiol figure, and so the authority concerned should give more importance towards the rural children for proper implementation of the RTE act.

Gogoi is worried because the proper education of a child mainly depends on the economical situation of the family and when, one-third of the population is below poverty line, to dream of providing quality education to every child is not possible in any way. Because, the parents of these children are not capable of earning their two square meal a day, so they send their children to work for more money.

The economist Amartya Sen once said: “If we invest 0.5% of the budget in the proper education of the children, we can hope for a more developed country within a very short period in return of the investment.”

Gogoi expressed her concern regarding the present scerio on child abuse and increasing child trafficking in the state.  She said, “The rate of child marriage and children trafficking is increasing every year, though many steps have been taken. Earlier most of such cases were hidden, but now with the contribution of the media, such cases come to the fore. The reporting on these are also increasing which helps the authority to take steps.”

Significantly, as per the annual data of the Commission, in the last two years, at least 3,000 children were either rescued or have gone missing in the state. As per the CID data, the major source districts are Baksa, Cachar, Dibrugarh, Golaghat, Jorhat, Karimganj, Sonitpur and Udalguri.