GUWAHATI: The Assam government has, in a historic move, set the ball rolling for making high school education accessible to students in tea gardens, a move that is aimed at improving the academic scenario in the state’s tea belt.
As many as 119 model high schools would be constructed across tea gardens in the state and a sum of Rs 142.50 crore has been allotted from the State Owned Priority Development (SOPD) fund of 2020-21 for the entire project.
A sum of Rs 1.20 crore would be spent on each model high school, which would be constructed by the state PWD.
The project undertaken is significant, as till date, tea gardens in Assam only had lower primary and upper primary schools set up on its premises.
“As an integral part of the greater Assamese society, the tea community has contributed immensely to the state’s socio-cultural development. The community, which has embraced Assam and Assamese as their own and assimilated into the Assamese society, must be enabled to reap benefits of equal development,” chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal said, while the laying the foundation of the work to construct the schools, during a programme in Nazira, Sivasagar on Sunday.
Sonowal also ceremonially launched the construction of the model high schools at Mekipur and Bamunpukhuri tea gardens at Nazira as a part of the initiative.
The schools will have all amenities like modern classrooms, teacher’s rest rooms, entrance gates, separate toilets for teachers and students, etc.
Assuring that the state government would not confine the development initiatives of the tea community only to setting up of model high schools, Sonowal said that colleges too would be set up in the tea gardens in future.
Meanwhile, state education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, while laying the foundation stone of model high schools in tea gardens under Rangapara constituency in Sonitpur district, said the schools, which would be completed by April, would help improve standards of living in tea gardens by the means of investment in education.
“It gives me immense pleasure to be a part of this ambitious project. Education forms the basis of progress in every society. The 119 new model high schools will open new vistas of opportunities for the wards of the tea garden workers,” Sarma later tweeted.
