WILLIAMNAGAR, Sep 2: For the children of Jalwagre Songgittal, a remote hamlet in East Garo Hills (EGH) district, education has been a dream turned nightmare.
They have lost touch with their studies for almost three years now. The reason: the teacher appointed for the school never reported for duty during this period.
Jalwagre Songgittal is about 20 km from Rongjeng and has about 110 households. It is in the Rongjeng C&RD Block but falls under the Songsak Assembly constituency. The school is also a polling station.
The drive to the village takes close to an hour with many sections of road currently being constructed under PMGSY. The school, more than 60 years old and almost at the centre of the village, had 70 children enrolled till 2020.
The villagers are mostly engaged in agriculture and plantation with the construction of the PMGSY road helping them to earn some extra.
“We don’t know what to do as we have exhausted most of our options. The number of students would have increased in the past two years, but they did not get any education without a teacher,” Salseng M. Sangma, the president of the Jalwagre Government LP School said.
“The teacher, who was always irregular, stopped coming to teach our children for the past two years. If the COVID lockdown is taken into account, our children have not attended a single class for almost three years,” he said.
The villagers said Sengwan Marak had been appointed as a regular teacher of the school a few years ago. He joined another teacher who died months after he joined.
Even when the other teacher was alive, Marak hardly visited the school or taught, the villagers said. “And after the other teacher died, he stopped coming to school,” Sangma said.
A contractual teacher was also sent to the school but the end of the contract system left Marak as the only one to teach the children, which he did not, the villagers said.
The children have been left to fend for themselves. The only other school in the vicinity is almost 7 km away, beyond the scope of travel for the children. With no other option, the children have been playing the entire day.
Fed up with Marak’s absence from school, the parents of the children approached the education department. “We raised the matter with the DMO. But there was no action despite the promise to visit our school. We appealed to the deputy commissioner (Swapnil Tembe then) hoping that our woes would end. However, he was transferred,” Sangma said.
The villagers also spoke to the block mission coordinator about their wards being denied education, after which a meeting of the villagers, the BMC and the teacher was held.
“The teacher then signed an agreement promising to come to school daily. But he skipped from the next day itself and is yet to come back,” the cook of the school said.
The indifference of the education department made the villagers decide to appeal to Trinamool Congress leader Mukul M. Sangma, who is also their local legislator.
“We don’t know who to turn to as this is getting ridiculous. Why are our children being left without education in this time and age? The government has failed us and our children. What hope do they have of a better future if they aren’t even given the opportunity to build it?” one of the villagers asked.
“We want to study but the teacher does not come. We would love to go to school if the teacher comes to teach us but we don’t know when we will be able to do so,” a Class II student said, his friends and relatives nodding in agreement.
When contacted, the DMO of EGH confirmed receiving a complaint and said the SDSEO was asked to take action against the erring teacher. She also said she would look into an agreement with the teacher over attendance.
The school in Jalwagre Songgital is not the only one without a teacher.
A report said more than 100 schools in the South Garo Hills district alone have no teachers, mainly due to the government’s decision to end the service of contractual teachers.
“If education really is a priority for this government, this is where they should begin. The situation is hard to describe in words. How can you leave children without an education and that too for three years? What is the point of having a department that does not understand the value of education?” Tuesbrial Marak, a Rongjeng resident who visited the Jalwagre Songgital school asked.
