ITANAGAR, Jul 24: The Arunachal Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) has said it is opposed to the operational guidelines (OG) issued by the state government for all the government schools to conduct online classes.
Expressing discontentment, APCC vice president Techi Tegi Tara said the benefits of online classes are limited to select urban areas only and “it is not at all applicable for the students in remote areas of the state.”
Tara said that the OG issued on 21 July to complete school admission before 31 July was in contradiction to the SOPs pertaining to the Covid-19 and the lockdown guidelines declared by the state government.
“Conducting online or digital classes of 40-45 minutes per day is technically not possible, especially for the students having no mode of internet communication,” he said, and added that “Arunachal, which has 600 defunct government schools due to extreme shortage of basic utilities, cannot conduct digital classes without uninterrupted power supply.”
“When the entire student community in the country is protesting against UGC and MHRD in one voice for endorsing online schooling, it is very demoralizing to see our state government unwaveringly promoting online school classes, ignoring the technical limitations that the state is reeling under,” the APCC said.
The decision of the state government “clearly exposes its inability to regularize quality education at this time of pandemic,” Tara added.
