SRIHARI SAYS BUILDING CERTIFICATION MUST

A meeting was held by education minister Kadiyam Srihari on Thursday in order to alert private schools and colleges regarding the need to have all required No Objection Certificates (NOC) from various departments.

The meeting was attended by urban affairs minister K.T. Rama Rao and other higher officials. The heads of many private institutions participated in the meet. All schools and colleges were instructed to have building certification, as per the National Building Code.

Major certificates that a school needs to possess include: Fire NOC, police NOC, structural stability certificate, occupancy certificate, sanitary certificate, building sanction plan, registered rental deed certificates and other documents. But most of the schools are troubled about the department’s decision as they lack many of the certificates.

School managements opined that they are left with no choice but to ‘close down schools’ if the department insists for all these certificates. The school managements in unison said that most of the schools were established decades ago before these norms came in. So they want all these schools to be exempted from the new decision. However, education department has not given any word on the exemption.

Telangana recognised schools’ management association president, S. Srinivas Reddy, said, “In the process of increasing literacy rate, earlier governments had relaxed certain norms regarding recognition process.”