Admn starts drive to teach BBN slum kids

bika Sharma

Tribune News Service

Solan, March 1

Children residing in the slums of the Baddi-Barotiwala-Nalagarh (BBN) industrial area can look ahead for a better future with the local administration starting a project called “Nayee Disha” to provide them basic education.

Brainchild of Nalagarh SDM Mahinder Pal Gurjar, the project involves ridding this industrial belt of child labour by providing them basic education. “The project focuses on identifying slum children who have dropped out of school, especially during the pandemic, and are experiencing hardships. Since they hail from families with few resources, most of them are forced to share responsibility with adults in the domestic arena.”

Magic Bus India Foundation is among four NGOs which have been roped in to provide education to the slum children. An assessment made by the administration into their literacy level revealed that a large number of them have dropped-out of class I despite being 10 years old. A majority of the children have dropped out before Class V while a few have managed to study uptill Class IX. As many as 216 households were surveyed by the district administration in the BBN area for this project.

A large number of slum clusters are located in the BBN in places like Swaraj Majra, Malkhu Majra, Kalyanpur, Thana, Chhatipura, Chakka, Bhatoli Kalan, Kujhal, Kishenpura, Juddi Kalan etc.

A household screening of the children residing in the slums revealed that the school dropouts fell in the age group of 5 to 16 years. Most of these migrant labourers had no ration cards while a few had below poverty level ration cards. They had large families with seven to 12 members in some cases.

SDM Gurjar said five NGOs had been roped in whose volunteers visited these slums and imparted basic primary-level education to the children who have dropped out of primary level while others are being motivated to enroll themselves in government schools where books and uniforms are being provided to them. “A Class VIII dropout, Mira, was motivated to re-join school in Class IX. She had dropped out after class VIII as her family had migrated back to their native village in Uttar Pradesh. She will be provided support to pursue a polytechnic course later,” added Gurjar.

A school run by a pharmaceutical company near Peerstan has also been re-started now. It had closed during the pandemic.