Out of 1,536 Zilla Parishad schools in the district, 415 schools are facing electricity supply cut off. This is due to non-payment of bills and the situation is same from the last 5 years.
Teachers who have air condition at their homes or cars are suffering as fans in the school are not working as the power sup ply is suspended.
Under the initiative ‘Pragat Shaikshanik Maharashtra’, digital schools, e-learning activities are being implemented in the state. With this, hundreds of Zilla Parishad schools in the district have gone digital. However, the very existence of digital and e-learning schools has been threatened due to power outage.
Zilla Parishad schools used to get maintenance funds for paying electricity bills. But from 2012-13, the fund was discontinued. Hence, there was a provision to pay all the bills through Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan’. But the Central government also discontinued the school grants. Therefore, the teachers’ unions had demanded the CEO to pay the electricity bill of the school citing gram panchayat law.
Following this, the CEOs directed the gram panchayats to pay the outstanding bills. However, the gram panchayats refused to pay the electricity bill of schools as its source of income is limited. As a result, the electricity bills of the schools remained unpaid and the Mahavitaran disconnected the power supply to the schools.
According to the details received from the education department, there are 1,036 digital schools in the district. Of these, 154 schools have been digitalised through Android TV digital, 235 schools through LED TV digital and 647 schools through computer projector. With no power supply, the digitalisation of schools would only remain will be affected.
