'Inadequate edu, health facilities in rural areas'

If a school building is available, there are no teachers. If teachers are available, the school building is not there: Gadkari

Union minister Nitin Gadkari on Thursday said there were not enough facilities available in the education and health sectors in rural areas, but the “situation was improving”. He was speaking at the inauguration of a multi-specialty charitable hospital at Sinhgad fort. “We do not have enough facilities available in the education and health sectors in rural areas. There are facilities in urban areas, but the situation in rural areas is not so good,” Gadkari said. The situation in rural areas was such that if a school building is available, there are no teachers. If teachers are available, the school building is not there, he said. “If both the things (teachers and school building) are there, then students are missing, and if all three elements are there, then education is not there,” he said.

Though this is the situation of schools in rural areas, it is now improving, the road transport and highways minister said. “As far as clinics are concerned, the situation is also the same in rural areas and we all have experienced this fact very well during Covid-19. There are 115 aspirant districts in the country which are socially, economically and educationally backward and the situation over there is very bad,” Gadkari said. The hospital which Gadkari inaugurated has been built on the premises of Apla Ghar, an orphanage run by social worker Vijay Phalanikar, and will help cater to the tribals and backward communities in the surrounding areas.

“The situation in the area where adivasis live is very bad. I can empathise with the situation as I have also been working for the last 13 years in Gadchiroli, Ettapalli, Sironcha, Aheri and Melghat and run ekal schools in these areas. In these areas, education and health facilities are not up to the mark,” the Lok Sabha MP from Maharashtra said.

Gadkari said when ventilators and BiPAPs were sent to these areas during Covid-19 pandemic, doctors did not know how to install these. “We had to give training through video conferencing on how to use a BiPAP. We can sense how serious the situation is in these regions about health facilities,” he said.