By IANS,
Kolkata: The West Bengal government is planning to open day care schools and creches for children of maids who come to the city from the suburbs.
“We are planning to open day care schools and creches for the children of domestic helps coming to the city daily from the suburbs. The mothers can leave the children in the schools in the morning and take them back while returning home in the evening,” school education secretary Bikram Sen said here Friday.
Thousands of women come to the city daily to work as domestic helps.
Addressing a programme observing National Education Day, Sen said his department will arrange for the studies and mid-day meals for these children.
He said efforts were also on to ensure the benefits of the Right to Education Act was extended to Kolkata street children. “For this, we plan to establish residential schools on the streets.”
The bureaucrat said the government was endeavouring to provide primary schools within a km of and upper primary schools within two kilometres of the residences of children by 2013.
According to the Right To Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009, every child in the six-14 year age group has to be provided elementary education till Class 8 with the responsibility resting on the state government.