Hyderabad: Telangana chief minister A Revanth Reddy on Friday, August 2, announced that the state government will bear the entire burden of paying electricity bills of all government schools. He added that the government will also engage women’s self-help groups (SHG) in managing and paying the sanitation workers and sweepers in government schools, so that teachers wouldn’t have to pay from their pockets for that purpose anymore.
Addressing a get-together of teachers of all the government teachers who received promotions at “Aatmeeya Sammelan” held at LB Stadium on Friday in Hyderabad, he told them that if they wanted to see him in the chief minister’s position, they needed to work hard to impart education to the children coming from the poor and marginalised sections of the society.
Expressing his concern over the decrease of enrollments in government schools by 2 lakh this year, he said that while 26 lakh students were enrolled in 30,000 government schools in Telangana, 33 lakh students were enrolled in private schools, though the teachers in government schools were more qualified than their peers in private institutions.
Stating that earlier governments not taking steps for provision of basic facilities and infrastructure in government schools, Revanth Reddy said this was a reason for this situation. He added that the government has proposed to allocate Rs 21,000 crore (7.3% of the total budget) for education in this year’s budget.
“We wanted to allocate 10% of the total budget for education, but because we had to fulfil various promises made by us to the people, we had to adjust the budget,” he said.
“The future of Telangana is in your hands, to educate the children coming from SC,ST,BC and minority sections. Only then the true aspirations of Telangana can be achieved,” he told the teachers.
He also said that the Telangana government was planning to construct stadiums in every mandal headquarters to encourage children for playing sports, and that the government has taken a policy decision to encourage youth for winning medals in sports, by giving them cash prizes, as well as jobs.
Underlining that around 25,000 government school teachers were promoted after nine years, and combining the Gurukul teacher promotions the total number of promotions could go up to 30,000, he assured that all other issues of the teachers would be resolved. Revanth Reddy added that the Telangana government is willing to lend its ear to their issues. The chief minister claimed that under the previous BRS government the condition of government employees had deteriorated.
