Resident in Kerala for five years, Poonam Thapa, native of Kathmandu in Nepal who works at a garment shop in Kalamassery, and her husband Srikant Nayak, an itinerant plumber, have scrimped on their daily expanses to educate their children.
Lakshmi, the couple’s older child, is in the third standard at the Government LP School, Pallilamkara in north Kalamassery where the younger one, Sameer, enrolled in the first standard this year.
“We have tightened our belts to give them decent education, but rising transportation charges have pushed us to the wall and we are thinking of discounting their studies,” Poonam shared her angst at a parents meet called by the school on Wednesday. And, she isn’t the only aggrieved parent. The school has a total of 40 students and 32 of them are wards of low-wage earning migrant (guest) workers.
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Project Roshni
Pallilamkara LPS is one of the schools being brought into the ambit of Project Roshni run by the Ernakulam district administration in collaboration with the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan with the aim of surmounting the language barrier to provide quality education to migrant children. The parents are excited about the project, which will offer morning meals to the children – their morning meal right now is sponsored by Humza, an NRI and an alumnus of the school – and put them at ease on the language front, with an SSA-appointed volunteer mentoring them through the year using novel multi-lingual pedagogical tools.
But transportation remains a stumbling block. “We stay in South Kalamassery and in place of charging a monthly fee of ₹400 per child last year, the autodriver who transports the kids is now demanding ₹800 per child, which we cannot afford,” says Poonam, who on Wednesday urged C.K. Prakash, general coordinator of Roshni; Jayasree Kulakkunnath, its academic coordinator, and P.B. Ratheesh, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan’s urban coordinator, to intervene for good.
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Mustakim, native of Jharkhand who works at the nearby Salafi Masjid, seconds Poonam’s demand. With his children in the first standard and pre-KG at the school, Mustakim feels there’s a dire need for the school to arrange for a means of transport for the children back to home. “I do everything at the mosque single-handedly and while dropping them to school early in the morning isn’t an issue, picking them up after school hours is,” he says. “We are actually among the relatively better off, with some parents not in a position to afford any school-related expenses. So, a school vehicle would be welcome.”
A Sheela, teacher at the school, points out that while the government has issued clothes for uniform for these students, several of them turn up without wearing uniform, as their parents do not have the means to pay the stitching expenses. Among the migrant children are those of coconut vendors, labourers working for contractors of Kochi Metro and those doing other sundry jobs.
“Humza sir has supported the school sponsoring playthings for pre-KG students, paying retainer for an extra teacher and sponsoring the morning meal. We now have to find a means for transport of these children,” she says. Roshni, run with the support of BPCL-Kochi, has its hands full, say officials. SSA Kerala project director P.A. Kuttikrishnan says he will examine ways to offer help. “There’s a rule that transport can be provided to those travelling more than three kms to school, but if there’s another school in their vicinity, they will be ineligible for this. But we will see what can be done,” he says. Sabeena Jabbar, chairperson of Kalamassery municipality’s education standing committee, pleads helplessness. “We don’t have a provision for that. Maybe, the local councillor can seek the support of some NGO or source CSR funds of some organisation to get this done,” she says.