Punjab wants NRIs to help upgrade rural schools

CHANDIGARH - The Punjab government wants well-settled Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) from the state to contribute to upgrade government schools in the states rural areas.

Punjab Education Minister Sewa Singh Sekhwan Friday appealed to Punjabi NRIs living across the world “to contribute magnanimously for the upgradation of infrastructure in government schools situated in rural areas”.

Punjab has thousands of NRIs, especially from the Doaba belt (between Sutlej and Beas rivers), comprising of Jalandhar, Kapurthala, Hoshiarpur and Nawanshahr districts, settled in western countries.

Majority of the Punjabi NRIs are settled in the United States, Canada, Britain and other European countries.

Sekhwan said: “The hard working Punjabis have carved a niche for themselves in every nook and corner of the globe with their determination and the whole state feels proud of their unparalleled achievements. Despite whole-hearted efforts of the state government; the government schools were not in a position to compete with the infrastructure of private schools as we always have budgetary constraints.”

The minister said that nearly 40,000 teachers had been recruited by the Punjab government in the last less than four years to ensure better education to students.

Noting that rural schools have been facing great difficulty in the form of unavailability of safe drinking water and clean toilets for their students, Sekhwan added that the data would be put on state education department’s website so that NRIs could adopt such schools in their respective native places for providing these facilities.