Government anguished over death of students: Bhatti

Karimnagar (Jagtial): Deputy Chief Minister Bhatti Vikramarka Mallu has said the entire State Cabinet was shocked and anguished over the death of two students of Peddapur Residential School in Metpally mandal of Jagtial district.

Two students of the residential schoold had died, and some others fell sick during the last 15 days.

While Ganaditya (13) died on July 26, Anirudh (12) died on August 9. Though the exact reason for the sudden deaths is not yet known, snakebite and food poisoning were suspected to be among the reasons.

He along with Minister Ponnam Prabhakar visited the school on Tuesday.

Later addressing a media conference, Bhatti said an inquiry will be ordered soon after the government receives the postmortem report of the students. After the neglect of residential schools by the previous government in the last 10 years, the Congress government gave special focus on education and health in this annual budget and allocated funds on a big scale.

An amount of Rs 5,000 crore was allocated for the construction of residential school buildings in this budget. A committee of officials will be constituted to increase diet charges in line with the price rise of essential commodities, he said.

The Deputy CM said apart from ex-gratia, the members in the affected families will be given jobs under the outsourcing method in Gurukul Society. District Collector was instructed to sanction Rs 5 lakh under the Indiramma Housing scheme if the affected families have no house.

All residential schools in the State would be revamped and required funds would be provided. Top priority will be given to the upkeep of residential school campuses, he asserted. The utter neglect of the previous BRS government in fund allocation culminated into the unfortunate incident, he said.

Vikramarka disclosed that though funds were sanctioned in 2020-21 for the construction of a school building in 12 acre Peddapur campus, the amount was not released. The contractor stopped the work midway as funds were not released.

He instructed the Residential Schools secretary to arrange emergency medicines, paramedical staff, medicines for dog and snake bites, available. The Deputy CM said the government has decided that one day in every month Ministers, MLAs , MLCs would visit residential schools and have food along with students.

The District Collectors, District Medical Health officers in line with government’s policy should visit residential school one day in a month, eat food along with students and understand their problems, he said.