149 private schools in city don't have required permission

By Our Staff Reporter

Guwahati, April 4: One hundred and forty nine private schools in Kamrup metropolitan district are functioning without the requisite permission, and the administration today warned that they might be shutdown if they do not obtain the approvals from the authorities concerned at the earliest.

At a press conference today, Kamrup deputy commissioner M Angamuthu said there are 377 high and higher secondary schools in the district. Of them, 121 are government and 256 private.

“Of these 256 private schools, 149 do not have the requisite permission to function. They have been told to obtain the approvals from the authorities concerned – like education department, administration, GMDA etc – at the earliest.

We will have to take drastic steps, if they fail to do so,” the DC cautioned.

However, no deadline has been fixed for the school magements to fulfill the norms.

Moreover, the administration is conducting a survey in all the schools to verify if they are following the guidelines in aspects like disaster magement, parking facilities, fee structure, qualification of teachers etc. Schools will face the music of any lapses were found by the surveyors.

Meanwhile, the DC said there are altogether 851 school buses and the administration has conducted a verification of 524 of them so far. “401 of them were found to have complied with the required norms of safety. The others were given time till March 31 to comply with the guidelines. We will conduct a scrutiny again. If we find any lapse, we will cancel the license of the school bus,” Angamuthu said.

For conducting the verification, the administration has formed a panel comprising an additiol district magistrate, the inspector of schools, the district transport officer and the DCP (traffic).

The DC admitted that there were many lanes in the city on which the school buses cannot ply. “Parents in such areas can jointly write to the administration seeking permission to arrange private vans to ply the children to the schools. Even if small vehicles are arranged, they too will have to comply with the safety norms like seat capacity etc,” the DC said.

Concerned at the growing traffic congestion during the school hours, the administration is contemplating on mutating the timings of some schools to ease the problem. “We feel that if certain changes in made in the timings of some schools, the traffic congestion during particular hours can be eased. We are working on it,” Angamuthu said.