For a third time in a row, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) education committee has rejected the Civic body’s proposal to privatize the schools and re-start 35 schools.
This was the third time when administration amended certain criteria in the proposal and presented a fresh proposal before the BMC committee.
The main reason to reject the proposal was the criteria set for the private organizations, which will run the schools. Another reason was that the committee elected by the mayor and education committee was not included in framing the guidelines.
Shiv Sena members Sheetal Mhatre, Snehal Ambekar, Sachin Padwal and Aarti Pednekar were not in the favor of the proposal while NCP
member Dr Saeeda Khan and Congress member Rajpati Yadav fully supported the proposal.
“It is difficult to run a company and keep the functioning stable with an annual turnover of less than Rs 5 crore. There have been instances, where organizations running civic schools left it midway after facing losses. Therefore, the condition was added in the proposal to ensure organization offering to run the school is financially capable to do so,” said a senior official from the BMC education department.
Earlier, BMC had started 35 of its Municipal schools with private partners and teachers scheme, which got shut down two years ago.
Mahesh Palkar, BMC education officer, said, “These schools were already closed due to low enrollment. There was no teaching activity there. Closing these schools on paper on paper was a mere formality so that school documents pertaining students and teachers could be officially shifted over to the amalgamated school.”