GAKUVED Federation general secretary Rupesh Velip addressing the media on mobile connectivity in remote villages. Santosh Mirajkar
MARGAO: The GAKUVED Federation has demanded that the government make a special scheme under the Tribal Sub Plan funds to provide Android phones to students belonging to the Scheduled Tribes.
The Federation has pointed out that issues affecting the network connectivity have come in the way of imparting education to the children of the Schedule Tribes inhabiting the remote villages in the hinterland areas of the state.
Addressing the media, Federation general secretary Rupesh Velip pointed out that students from the tribal areas are the most affected due to the connectivity issues. The Federation has suggested a host of measures to the government, including a suggestion to connect all the remote villages with optical fibre cable internet services (presently this service is available at every village panchayat).
Secondly, the Federation has called for making necessary provision to set up Wi Fi towers in the villages for online education purpose and to make provision for the parents to buy mobile phones/tabs for the online education purpose
“The present government is pushing Goa 60 years backward in terms of education as education is accessible only to the students who are residing in the cities, while those in the villages are being purposely kept backward as there is no mobile and internet connectivity”, Rupesh said.
He said students in many rural areas, especially in talukas of Quepem, Sanguem, Canacona, Sattari, Dharbandora, Pernem, Bicholim and Sanquelim have not access to internet. “Students are facing difficulties in attending online classes due to the lack of internet connectivity. Many a time, the internet speed of the mobile network providers is less than 30kbps”, he added.
Peter Viegas said that students have been complaining they are missing online classes due to lack of connectivity. “We urge the schools and teachers to record the contents of online in the form of video or power point presentation and make it available online, specially designed websites”, he said adding “this will help the students to get access to the study material who have missed the online classes due to poor network.
