Akali Dal slams Punjab govt for spending Rs 35 crore on installing 25,000 plaques in schools

Chandigarh, April 7 (IANS) The Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) on Monday said the Aam Aadmi Party government’s decision to spend Rs 35 crore in installing 25,000 plaques for minor projects in Punjab government schools and conduct functions to unveil them was a scam in the making.

In a statement here, party leader Daljit Singh Cheema said it was condemnable that Chief Minister Bhagwant Mann had handed over responsibility for conducting the minor works as well as bringing truck-loads of plaques and holding parent-teacher meetings to unveil the projects to party leaders from Delhi who were charged with corruption and had even done jail terms for various crimes.

"The AAP government has 92 legislators in the state Assembly, but it has not found anyone competent to lead the work and has given this responsibility to Delhi leader Manish Sisodia and others. The Chief Minister has been reduced to escorting the Delhi leaders to schools and hospitals. The outsiders, who have no stake in governance, are framing policies to run the schools and hospitals,” he said.

Asserting that the scheme was nothing but a naked attempt to funnel the state taxpayers' money to Delhi, Cheema said: "Everyone knows that the Delhi education model is a failed one. There is no sense in trying to replicate it in Punjab except to indulge in a scam through corrupt practices."

The Akali leader also condemned the manner in which government school teachers were being forced to put up plaques for extremely minor repair works, which amounted to wasting precious resources which could have been used to fill more than 60,000 vacancies, as well as introduce modern educational aids in the government schools.

Cheema also castigated the AAP government for forcing teachers to become social media workers of the government. He said teachers had been asked to open Twitter and Facebook accounts and share AAP government posts with hashtags as part of an exercise to divert the attention of the public from the failure of the government on all fronts.

"I appeal to Punjabis to rise up to safeguard the education sector and prevent the AAP government from destroying it by indulging in such stunts," he added.