Srinagar August 06:(KNS)      Congress leader Kadfeen Choudhary on Friday said that education is becoming a worst causality after the removal of special status in Jammu and Kashmir and that the school dropout rate is witnessing an unprecedented spike.

In a statement to KNS, Kadfeen said that in the year 2017, the school dropout rate in Jammu and Kashmir was around 27 thousand and that at present, it has gone up to more than 50 thousand. He said that the lack of infrastructure in government run schools is responsible for such a mess on the ground.  The pathetic functioning of the allied departments for failing to provide even the basic drinking water and electricity in the schools in Jammu and Kashmir. “And we are expecting our children to get interested in going to the schools. The dropout rate has emerged mainly from the government run schools and not from the private ones. There are factors like lack of infrastructure diffidently responsible for the current mess we are finding our educational system engulfed in,” Kadfeen said.

As per the government records, out of 8966 schools and 559 Anganwadi centers, 1480 schools (17 per cent) and 203 Anganwadi centers (36 per cent) were not provided any drinking water facility by the PHE Department or any other Department. It implies that the Department had not been serious in mitigating the water scarcity problem to the school-going children despite the programme being in operation for the last over 10 years.  The funds for providing water supply to schools were stopped by GoI since 2016-17. Such an action by the government of India is reportedly due to the non- performance of the executing agency on ground.(KNS)