Plant trees, get fee waiver in Assam colleges

Guwahati: To promote aforestation among students, the Assam government linked the free admission of poor students to tree plantation while making it mandatory for every college to adopt at least one village.

Announcing to make it compulsory for poor students availing educational fee waiver from the government to plant and nurture a sapling, education minister Himanta Biswa Sarma told reporters, “The students availing this facility under defined category will have to produce a photograph of a tree being planted by him. When the same student applies for fee waiver in the second year, he or she will have to produce another photograph of the same sapling in its current state.”

Under a new scheme, the state had announced waiver of admission fees in government colleges and higher secondary schools for students from families whose annual income is less than Rs 1 lakh per annum up to graduation.

Informing that the college will have to produce these photographs to the education department to get disbursement against the fee waived to the poor students, Mr Sarma said that some of the grants to the colleges have also been linked to mandatory adoption of villages.

“We have prepared a scheme in which each college will have to adopt a village to get the government grants,” said Mr Sarma adding that college teachers will have to take some mandatory classes in nearby schools also. “We will also grant some fund to the colleges to fulfill their social responsibility in the villages like providing blackboard, desk-bench and water-filter to schools or motivating villagers for cleanliness etc.,” said the education minister who on Monday hosted a meeting with the principals and teachers of colleges to apprise them about the new scheme.

The education minister also appealed to the teachers who are said to have produced fake degrees to resign voluntarily in the larger interest of society.