Hyderabad schools demand exemption from fire & traffic NOC; colleges demand free reimbursement twice a year

Taking cognisance of delay in fee reimbursement, Kadiam Srihari, deputy chief minister who also holds the education portfolio, said that from the ongoing academic year professional and non-professional courses will be bifurcated to facilitate regular and uninterrupted reimbursement of the fee by the government. The minister, on Thursday, held a meeting with school and colleges managements association to discuss the issues pertaining to the education.

In the high level meeting which also had IT minister KT Rama Rao, bureaucrats and higher officials of the school, intermediate and higher education in attendance, college management raised concerns over the government's lackadaisical attitude towards fee reimbursement and sought the reimbursement to be done twice a year -- October/ September and January/ February.

"We also reiterated our demand for 40 per cent hike the tuition fee for intermediate students, which at present is Rs 1760 for the first year and RS 1940 for the second year. We were assured that the issue would be discussed with the CM (who currently has the file), We also raised the issued of doubling the fee for degree colleges fee from RS 5,500 to Rs 11,000," said G Satish from KG to PG JAC.

The junior college management representatives also raised the issue of removing the fee charged from sliding from one course (Rs 500) and medium (Rs700) to another, to give equal opportunity to all students to study what they want to. The private school managements raised their concerns over norms of obtaining GHMC, fire and traffic NOCs, which they said were outdated and need to be revisited. They said that instead of making it mandatory for schools to have 20 feet of space around the school building for fire NOC, the technology used by the department should be upgraded.

They urged the minister to make the traffic NOC mandatory for only such schools that are on highways or main roads."Thousands of schools in the city are awaiting their ETR which is renewed year 10 years but are not able to get it because the norms are impractical. 90 per cent schools will have to move out of the city limits if we have to follow these norms," said S Madhusudhan Reddy, Telangana Recognised Schools Management Associations. They also want the GHMC to charge electricity and property taxes at commercial rates.