Shoes for schoolchildren in December

The Education Ministry will commence a programme in December to provide 775,000 students with vouchers to purchase school shoes, Minister Susil Premajayantha told Education Times.

Each student is due to receive a Rs 3,000 voucher, with the total project costing over Rs 2.3 billion.

Students who are to receive the vouchers have been selected from some of the most rural and isolated schools throughout the island.

The programme will be launched islandwide from December 4.

The voucher will be issued via a QR Code. Those who receive the voucher can take the voucher with them to a shoe retailer, where it will be scanned. The students will then be able to use the voucher to purchase a shoe of their choice. The retailer will then receive the payment from the Education Ministry.

Only shoes will be issued via the voucher. Recipients of the voucher will not be able to convert them to cash, the Minister said.

Footwear companies who wish to participate in the project with the Education

Ministry are required to register with the Ministry before November 26.

The vouchers will be distributed via provincial governors, who have already been notified to distribute the vouchers to the selected students in their provinces.

Minister Premajayantha noted that 51,000 of the students who are to receive the vouchers are in the Western Province, and stressed that it shows there are rural and isolated schools in supposedly more developed areas as well.

The funds that are to be used for the project had been earmarked for another project but had been returned unutilised to the Ministry. “We thought it would be better to use the funds to provide school shoes to students whose parents are finding it hard to purchase new shoes for their children owing to economic difficulties. By providing the vouchers in December, we are ensuring that they can purchase the shoes at the beginning of next year rather than wait for the new school term,” said Dr Premajayantha.

The school shoe voucher project will be continued in 2025, he said.