Solar power for schools!
07/02/2020
PUNE: Solar panels will be installed at government schools in rural areas of Maharashtra to combat frequent power shutdown and improve digital education.
With increasing digitization of schools — e-learning schemes, digital attendance and more — schools need to be self-reliant in terms of electricity to address the need of the hour. To this enbd, the state government will soon install solar panels in every school that would generate 1-1.5KV electricity.
A meeting of state education officials — including commissioner of education Vishal Solanki and school education minister Varsha Gaikwad — was recently held by deputy chief minister Ajit Pawar in Mumbai.
Officials who attended the meeting said the solar panel project would be initiated with the help of Maharashtra Energy Development Agency (MEDA).
Solanki said, “Many proposals were discussed during this meeting. However, decisions on the proposals are still pending. The electricity bills of several government schools in Maharashtra have been pending with the electricity board. Thus many schools do not get power due to a cut-off while some others face shut downs.”
Power supply is a major issue for the schools as the government has introduced various schemes over the past three years, some of which require access to the Internet. Linking of students’ Aadhaar cards with bank accounts, attendance update on a daily basis, e-learning kits screened on digital boards, among others, are a few such examples.
Over 70% of the 90,000 schools across the state have been digitized in five years. But students in several schools have not benefited. Teachers blame outages and poor internet facilities. There has been a demand from schools to the government to provide solar panels to address power shutdown issues for five years. In some schools, fresh packs of LED screens and projectors are left unutilized.
Source ( The Times Of India)
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