Centre's move to shut child labour schools in S Dinajpur leaves students, staff in lurch

BALURGHAT: Uncertainty shrouds the future of students, teachers and other staff of several National Child Labour Schools (NCLS) in South Dinajpur, which have been served with closure notice from Centre. It has been decided by the Centre to shut down these schools from April 1 this year.

At present, all the NCLS of this district have been running without any aid from the Central government. Without receiving any aid from the Centre over the past couple of months, the teachers have now been bearing the expenses for mid-day meals and other necessary expenses from their own pockets.

According to an official source, the school authorities of NCLS on March 14 received a direction from the Project Director of the concerned department about this decision.

In South Dinajpur, as many as 18 NCLS are run by the Central government aid.

Notably, NCLS started functioning in this district in 1996 with the target to rehabilitate children withdrawn from hazardous occupations and provide them with formal education.

"At the special schools, the children rescued from various hectic occupations are provided with bridge education, vocational training, nutrition, stipend and healthcare before being brought into the mainstream formal educational system," said the source.

The source said such special schools were reduced to 30 only covering all eight blocks of the district with 130 teachers after a survey being conducted in 2019 by the Centre.

In addition to this, the teachers have not received any salary in the past 27 months. They are now shocked after receiving the sudden order from the Centre about the permanent shut down of these special schools from April keeping the future of teachers, students and others attached to it in the dark. The students, being ignorant about the recent decision of the Centre, used to come to schools regularly.

Cooked foods have been served to them on a regular basis by the financial support of the teachers. The cooks and the helpers have been providing the service without taking any money. One of such cooks, Sohagi Barman, has appealed to the Centre to save the schools.

A teacher of Balurghat block Biswajit Dutta said: "Our future is now in complete darkness because of the Centre's decision. We have been bearing the expenses by our own money to run the schools. Our salary has stopped for the last 27 months.

We will be forced to go for an indefinite hunger strike if the apathy from the Centre continues in future."