Guwahati, June 20: Irked by the unwillingness of the tea garden managements to provide land for schools, the Assam government has decided to de-lease the land required for the purpose.

Education and health minister Himanta Biswa Sarma announced this here today at a function to launch mobile medical units for 320 tea gardens where the garden managements were present. Union health minister J.P. Nadda inaugurated the mobile units.

"Tea garden managements in the state are not comfortable with providing education and health to its workers and their children. The state government had taken an important decision to set up one high school in each tea garden. For the past three months, the education department has been trying hard to acquire land. These tea garden managements are just not providing us the land. The land is ours. We have given it to them on lease. Now they are not giving us just one acre of land to set up a high school," said Sarma.

"I will request chief secretary V.K. Pipersenia to be very strict in dealing with the tea garden managements. We will de-lease one acre of land in every tea garden to set up a school so that the garden managements get a strong message that this is not a Congress government and they cannot play with the lives of the people. We don't need to beg them. This is our land and we will take it back," said Sarma.

He said Dispur would set up high schools in a phased manner and 200 of them this year alone.

There are 800 big tea gardens in the state. Generally, a tea garden with an area of over 400 hectares is considered big. The Telegraph tried to contact the minister to ask how the tea gardens had been selected to set up the schools but he was unavailable.

The director of secondary education, P. Jidung, said he did not have any information about this move of the government. The tea associations were not willing to comment.

Nadda described the mobile medical units as a historic step. He promised that depending on the performance of the units, more would be added to bring down the operational gap from a month to 15 days.

Each unit will cover four tea gardens and have two vehicles, one equipped with outpatient department, diagnostics, laboratory facilities and information education communication materials, while the second vehicle will transport human resources, a release said.

Under the signature project, Hindustan Latex Family Planning Promotion Trust will operate 130 units across Assam with funds from the State Health Society and National Health Mission, Assam, through the public-private partnership mode.

Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal said 21 lakh people would benefit from the facility. He said 62,000 people have received free X-rays in government hospitals after the launch of free diagnostic facilities by the state health department and called upon the people to take advantage of government schemes.

Sarma said each unit would be stationed in a garden for a week to diagnose and treat patients. It will return there after a month. . The expenditure of the facility is Rs 25 crore per annum, to be borne by the Centre. Sarma asked the tea garden managements to give maternity leave at least for three months. He said the state government would give the gardens Rs 2,000 a month against this leave.