Sonepur, April 17: The weeklong Sikshya Chetana Abhijaan by the school and mass education department suffered a setback here as there were gross irregularities noticed during the Pravesh Utsav or the welcome ceremony of the programme. The district inspector (DI) of school of Subarnapur has held up pay of seven teachers of some schools in the Sonepur municipality for violating dress code and irregularities during the programme.

The community mobilisation drive aims to reach out parents, guardians, people’s representatives, and school management committees (SMCs) for bringing all children of 6-14 years age to schools and make them aware about school education in the local context. As a number of children between 6 and 14 years of age continue to remain out of school or drop out owing to several reasons, the campaign makes an attempt to address those reasons through promotion of local interventions like parents’ counseling, awareness rallies, public meetings, mother-teachers’ association meetings and meetings of the newly-formed SMCs.

The state government has formed state-level, district-level and block-level squads to supervise the activities during Pravesh Utsav in the state. The squad in Sonepur found at the Block Colony Primary School that the school was not at all prepared for the welcome ceremony.

It found that the students who had to take admission had arrived, but the teachers were not present.

Moreover, no arrangement had been done for the Pravesh Utsav as per the government instruction.

After being informed about it the Sonepur DI made a visit to schools in the municipality area and found that in several schools, teachers were late and did not come to school with the prescribed dress. Sonepur DI Mamata Swain said she had inspected the schools in the municipal area.