Mira-Bhayandar: Education Council rejects ₹6 crore proposal to fund renovation in school buildings

Mira Bhayandar: In a major setback for the Mira Bhayandar Municipal Corporation (MBMC), the Maharashtra Primary Education Council (MPES) has rejected its proposal seeking funds amounting ₹6 crore for renovating municipal school buildings in Mira Road and Bhayandar.

The Funding

MBMC’s education department had sought the funds from the Department of Education and Sports which apparently referred the request to the MPEC which is responsible for the preparation of annual work plan and budget of Samagra Shiksha Scheme, availability of funds, allocation of funds, its allocation, implementation, coordination and monitoring of the program.

The education department was eyeing funds amounting to ₹4 crore for school numbers 16, 17, 18 and 31 in Bhayandar, the remaining ₹2 crore was sought to renovate and upgrade school number 21 in Mira Road. In her letter to the municipal commissioner, deputy director of MPES- Dr Vaishali Veer expressed the inability of the council in fulfilling the demands. The deputy director has also asked the civic administration to try and arrange the funds from its own kitty or other sources like-corporate social responsibility (CSR), district development funds, legislator/ MP area development funds or any other schemes mooted by the central government.

New Changes

After taking a number of steps towards improving existing facilities and launching tech-savvy initiatives-mainly the introduction of digital classrooms aimed at providing a quality learning experience to students, the MBMC had recently decided to change the dress code for its students at par with privately-operated education institutes in the twin-city.

At present, there are 36 municipal schools which impart education in Marathi, Urdu, Hindi, Gujarati and semi-English mode to around 8,025 students who mostly come from economically weak background.