SATS monetary crunch turns students’ diet stale
For the past few months, the Telangana State Sports School at Hakimpet has been reeling under a massive funds crunch. Its student athletes are not getting food according to their dietary needs. Its teachers and other staffers have not received their salaries for three months.
In fact, students of the sixth, seventh and ninth standards have been asked to go home for a month until their annual examinations. School officials said these holidays have been declared in light of the school being declared an examination centre for the tenth and intermediate board exams scheduled next month.
However, other employees said the students have been asked to go home since the school doesn't have the money for regular operations.
Officials from the hostel and mess told Deccan Chronicle that the students’ diets have been severely affected.
In the last two weeks, students have been given no milk or bananas. Curd is too expensive and so they are given buttermilk instead. One official said on condition of anonymity, “Under normal conditions, students are served three kinds of meat (chicken, mutton and fish). Now, they are being served only one kind of meat a day.”
Several older students at the school said they felt a change in their performance because of the new diet.
One intermediate student, a track athlete, said, “Since exams are around the corner, we are not training at full steam. If we did train properly, we would faint after a workout.”
The mess official agreed. “Their current poor diet will have far-reaching consequences in June, when most competitions and events are held. The body has to be maintained well till then. If they don’t get protein-rich food now, their muscle gains will be wasted,” he said.
Parents have also criticised the school for sending their children home just before the annual examinations scheduled in April. One of them said, “This is revision time for the students, and teachers are supposed to guide them at this time.”
Teacher and other staff have not got their salaries. One teacher admitted that expenses at home had become hard to manage due to pending salaries. A hostel staffer said he borrowed money from his family last month.
Yadav, a parent of one of the students, rued the state of affairs: “I expected my son to be taken care of and encouraged as an athlete. I hoped this would help him get a sports-quota job when he grows up. If this is how he is treated, how will he achieve this?”
A senior administrative official said bills have piled up to enormous proportions. “We are supposed to pay our caterers more than `30 lakh. The caterers have been sending us notices regularly but we are pleading with them to consider the children’s plight. In fact, we have taken loans from external sources to pay some bills,” he said.
The official said all academies and schools run by SATS have been facing similar problems.