Teachers hunt for students

TT, Alipurduar, March 8: Three newly recruited teachers at the Bachyu Memorial Primary School, which was reopened in February after five years, have been scouting for students.

The school had been closed since 2012 because of non-availability of students. The teachers are going around in the area persuading parents to send their wards to the school.

The teachers have already managed to enroll 40 children at the school. The school has classes from pre-primary to Class IV and is situated in the Duttapatti area (ward 10) of Alipurduar town.

On February 7, Ajoy Kumar Jaiswal, Pawan Yadav and Ria Das joined the school and from the next day, they, along with local people, launched a hunt for students.

Jaiswal, the teacher in-charge, said: "We three teachers, along with local people, had gone door to door in the area convincing parents to send children to the school. The children belong to poor families and want mid-day meal which is not provided now because of shortage of rice. It should soon be given. Otherwise, the children will leave the school again. The school has no proper infrastructure and we have received only few new books."

Prem Kant Kamti, the sub-inspector of schools, Alipurduar Circle, changed the medium of instruction at the institution from Bengali to Hindi as the area has mostly Hindi speaking people.

"I have already requested higher officials to provide Rs 35000 for repairing the school. I have written to the food supply department to allot rice to the school," Kamti said.

Shibaji Singh, a guardian, said the teachers had not fulfiled their promises. "When the teachers came to me, they assured me that soon, mid-day meal would be given to the children. They promised books and dresses also. But a month is over since the classes began and they couldn't keep their word."

As of now, teachers take classes for one hour a day from Monday to Saturday.