BHOPAL: School education department has released the specifications related to school dress to be provided to students of class 1-8, after cabinet gave nod that school dresses should be prepared by SHGs (Self Help Groups).
Each student will get two dresses and the SHGs will be paid Rs 600 per dress. The school education department will pay 75% of amount in advance to SHGs and remaining after verification of school dress and supply details.
State Rural Livelihood Mission, Women Finance and Development Corporation and State Urban Livelihood Mission will act as nodal agencies and coordinate with Rajya Shiksha Kendra. For the session 2020-21, Madhya Pradesh Agency for Promotion of Information Technology (MAPIT) has prepared a SHG livelihood portal. Nodal agencies will verify the SHGs according to their localities.
Collectors will decide on efficiency of SHGs and allot work of preparing school dresses accordingly. SHGs have to provide the dresses in time decided by the district authorities. According to specifications provided by department, the SHGs have to use cloth with 64-70% polyester and 33% cotton. For girls, a tunic and shirt will be considered as a pair of dress while for boys half pant and half shirt has been decided as a pair.
For students of middle schools, girl students will get salwar, kurta and a jacket and boys will be entitled to full shirt and a full pant. All students will get two pairs of school dress. The school education department has suggested a combination of two colours for school dress to be finalized by the school management committee or district purchase committee of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan.
These committees could either chose from a combination of navy blue pant/salwar and light blue shirt/kurta. Another colour that has been suggested is dark grey pant and red line shirt.
Quality control of the school dresses will be done at several levels and all the nodal agencies including the school management committees. The remaining 25% of the payment will be released only after quality control is approved by the committees. The SHGs will get three months time to supply the dress.
Students of class 1-8 have been in a lurch for past several years. They used to get prepared dresses but then for past two years the amount for school dress was transferred in the bank account of the parents. There were lot of complaints about the size and quality of dresses after which the decision was changed. However, under scheme for women empowerment the preparation of school dresses has again been entrusted to the SHGs with multi-layered monitoring system.
