Punjab Govt’s flagship campaign against drug abuse in limbo

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, June 25

‘Tu Mera Buddy’, a flagship campaign of the state government against drug addiction, was started in August 2018. However, nodal officers of government schools, mentioned in the list of the district administration completely disowned the scheme and said they were no longer associated with it.

About ‘Tu Mera Buddy’ scheme

Advertisement

• Calling for ‘Nashe Ton Azadi’ (freedom from drugs), Chief Minister Capt Amarinder Singh had launched ‘Tu Mera Buddy’ programme to take the war against drugs to schools and colleges to mark the 72nd Independence Day on August 15, 2018
• Lauding the encouraging results of the Special Task Force to check drug abuse in Punjab, the Chief Minister said after the great success of Drug Abuse Prevention Officers (DAPO) programme, ‘Tu Mera Buddy’ was aimed to further take the anti-drugs campaign to the grassroots level with healthy participation of students
• The project involved principals, teachers, students and their parents. The buddy project will be led by class teachers and will be supervised by principals and District Education Officers

The current scenario is that ‘Tu Mera Buddy’ has been left to online seminars or speeches on drug de-addiction delivered by students once or twice a year.

While the administrative officials blame it on the pandemic and online education, insiders said the Education Department was not interested in this campaign and they very smartly converted it into ‘Buddy Group’.

The ‘Buddy Group’ has nothing to do with the check on drugs and is rather based on sharing of class notes, videos, question papers and other school-related information during the pandemic to the students who do not own mobile phone.

As this correspondent made calls to several government schoolteachers and principals, all of them initially mistook the ‘Tu Mera Buddy’ campaign of DAPO with the ‘Buddy Group’ concept. The teachers said the Education Secretary in the last few months stressed so much emphasis on the ‘Buddy Group’ programme that they had completely forgotten the three-year-old drug-related campaign.

In Jalandhar, five best schools under ‘Tu Mera Buddy’ concept have even got screened – GSS Smart School, Gandhi Camp, Government Model Co-Educational School, Ladowali Road, GGSSS Basti Sheikh, GSS Smart School, Maqsudan, and GGSS School, Patara.

When the nodal officer and English lecturer Jatinder Kumar of Gandhi Camp school was contacted, he denied having been deputed for any such work. Likewise, Principal of Patara school Rajinderpal Singh said, “We have held a few online events and a speech on drug abuse. Ther is no nodal officer for this scheme in the school.”

A college principal when contacted said the scheme could clearly not be followed the way it had been initially designed. “It’s only through indirect methods that we can motivate students not to fall in the wrong trap. We cannot physically reach out to students and see what they are upto,” he said.

Principal Kiran Randhawa of MLU DAV College, Phagwara, denied having any student enrolled under the ‘Tu Mera Buddy’ scheme of the state government. “Our teachers are very vigilant to note any wrong behaviour of students. So, this aspect is being taken care of well without any scheme as well,” she said.