Rent liability soars as DSEK fails to pay owners of hired buildings
Srinagar: The J&K government has failed to clear the liability piled from past many years against the rooms hired on rent to run the educational institutions especially those established under erstwhile SSA scheme.
Insiders said that due to the inordinate delay by the school education department the liability has piled up in lakhs for past more than five years. The delay has annoyed the house owners who threaten the schools heads to lockdown the rooms that have been hired on rent.
In Srinagar district alone, the department has rent liabilities of over 200 schools. Even though the number of rented schools has decreased post rationalization process initiated by school education department in 2015, but the rent of previous years is still pending.
“The department has not paid rent of schools since 2012, the schools were clubbed in 2015. So their rent has to be paid to the owners of the rooms,” the official said. In Srinagar district around 62 percent government schools are sans government accommodations.
The official said the rent of the schools is fixed by the rent assessment committee headed by the concerned Deputy Commissioner (DC) as its Chairman, Chief Education Officer (CEO) and Assistant Executive Engineer of PWD department as its members.
“They fix the rent of the parent schools which are set up under state plan while as the rent for SSA schools is released from MHRD through State Project Director SSA,” said a top official dealing with the subject.
The schools functioning from rented accommodations lack basic amenities like toilet facility, drinking water facility and playground for students.
Moreover, the schools have no safety measures to prevent any fire incident, puncturing the government claims to install fire extinguishers in all the schools.
The department has a rent liability of more than 70 schools in Ganderbal district from past five years which had left the department in huge liability against the owners.
In Baramulla, the department has rent liability against 500 schools which include 300 which were merged with adjacent schools posit rationalisation.
“The government has not paid the rent to the owners whose buildings have been hired to run schools on rent in south Kashmir districts as well,” an official said.
Director School Education Kashmir Mohammad Yunis Maliksaid the department is reviewing the rent liability cases and many files have been approved to release the rent in favour of the owners who had given their rooms to education department to run the schools.
“I have seen many files and cleared them as well. I will see the pending liability of left out schools and proposal will be put to the administrative department for release of funds,” Malik said.
KV Correspondent
