Poor facilities at exam halls to test students

SSC examinations to begin tomorrow

Nearly 20 per cent of the total 5,646 exam centres set up across the state for the SSC public exams, scheduled to begin from Friday, lack basic facilities such as benches, desks, tables, fans, power, drinking water etc. The massive power cuts being imposed across AP will further compound students’ woes.

Despite the tall claims of the government of providing basic facilities in exam centres, large numbers of students are forced to sit on the floor to write the exams every year. About 12.36 lakh students have registered for the examination this year.

Officials are making last minute efforts to provide basic facilities at centres and district collectors have been asked to hire furniture if necessary.

Since a majority of centres are in government schools, the district education officials were told to move furniture from nearby private schools and colleges to the centres as a temporary solution.

“All -out efforts are being made to provide basic facilities to students at the exam centres. We have also written to AP Transco to provide uninterrupted power supply during exam time from 9.30 am to 12 noon,” said B. Manmadha Reddy, director, SSC Board.

Meanwhile, students can download their hall tickets from www.bseap.org for the first time from this year. This was done to stop private school managements from withholding the hall tickets of students whose fees are in arrears.

Students will also have the facility to obtain photocopies of the answer scripts in all the subjects from this year. They have to pay `1,000 per subject for the purpose.