Imphal, January 12 2009: THE FIRST ever cabinet meeting of the SPF government of the new year has decided to abolish 51 government schools.

Briefing media persons, state Education Minister L Jayentakumar revealed that the state cabinet, chaired by Chief Minister Okram Ibobi, today decided that 37 Lower Primary Schools, 13 Primary Schools and one Junior High School under Zone-I would be abolished, and another 52 schools under the same zone would be upgraded.

The schools that would be upgraded are one Junior High School and 51 LP Schools.

Another four Junior High Schools would be down-graded to the level of Primary Schools.

The Minister revealed that the Monday cabinet includes framing of merit scholarships, incentives for the students, upgrading, amalgamation and abolishing of schools, adopting the public private partnership (PPP) system etc.

The minister further informed under the merit scholarship 300 students each from the 10th standard and 12th standard will be provided with scholarship.

While an amount of Rs.6000/ would be given to the Class X students annually for a period of two years, a sum of Rs.12,000/ would be given annually to the students of Class XII for a period of three year, disclosed the minister.

Apart from that the minister also informed that incentives and assistance will be provided to the first division holders in examination conducted by the Board of Secondary and added that a sum of Rs.5000/ would be given to students securing above 75% and Rs.3000/ to students securing above 65% to 75% .

The Education Minister also informed Rs.1000/ each from these incentives would be for the school management and teaching staff.

The Education Minister also informed that one special category English medium government schools from Class VI to X would be established in each of the districts besides necessary recruitment of teachers and lecturers.

The Minister further informed that with an aim to pave way for the students to exploit their talents and also to enable them find self-employment opportunities, in the mode of the Public Private Partnership (PPP), the students would be given training by a company from outside the state.

In this regard, the Education Department has signed a memorandum with the company called Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Service Cluster Development.

Within two years, the company will train 5,000 students.

The training will have two phases of 2,500 students each.

The plan is estimated to cast about Rs 4.2 crores, Minister Jayentakumar said.

The cabinet has also approved of conducting Departmental Promotional Committee (DPC) test for appointment of teachers.

The teachers to be appointed include 112 lecturers of Higher Secondary Schools.

There are 34 government Higher Secondary Schools.

If two lecturers are to be appointed for each subject, a total number of 1,564 lecturers would be required.

But as of now, the total number of lecturers on regular, part-time and contract basis is only 824.Therefore, the step for filling up the vacancies is being taken by the government, Jayentakumar said.

Besides, the cabinet has also decided to conduct viva voce for 83 Hindi graduate teachers, 65 Hindi matriculate teachers and 1,075 primary teachers whose written tests had already been conducted.

The Cabinet approved of the government plan of giving employment to 117 sports persons who have bagged gold medals in the National Games.

It was also decided to add another 18 posts of Havildar to 73 posts of the same for which appointment notice had already been issued.

In another decision, the cabinet resolve to withdraw the onus of repairing/improving the National Highway-39 from the Border Roads Organisation (BRO) and hand over the same to the state PWD.

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