Over 1 lakh basic education students won't be able to wear shoes this winter

AGRA: Over 1 lakh basic education students won't be able to wear shoes this winter due to the alleged laxity of the basic education department. Most of the schools have got the wrong size of shoes when they were distributed recently.
According to sources, even if the shoes are exchanged, it will still take at least two months, including the winter vacation, for the students to get the right size of shoes.
A newly-launched scheme by the state government aimed at providing school shoes for primary school students. Over 1 lakh students were supposed to get these shoes. So far, only 55% of the shoes have been distributed, of which most students got shoes which didn’t fit them.
“It will take another month to complete the whole distribution process and if the department allows the shoes to be exchanged for the right sizes, it will take 15 more days, and up to a month if the winter vacations start. So the students will only be able to wear the shoes towards the middle of February,” said an official.
Talking to TOI, Nidhi Shrivastava, in-charge of a girl’s primary school in Idgah area said, “Although we submitted the list of required number of shoes with size numbers, the department still sent us shoes that didn’t fir. We approached higher authorities over this issue, and they refused to rectify it. Now the parents and children constantly ask us about the shoes.”
“The department ordered the shoes before taking lists from the schools. If they had been ordered according to the schools’ requirements, we would not have faced these issues,” said Rajeev Verma, city president, Uttar Pradesh Primary Teachers’ Association.
Girijesh Chowdhary, assistant director, basic education said, “We have received many complaints regarding shoe size. We will ask schools to exchange shoes and if still the problems persist we will get it changed by the supplier at the earliest.”
There are over 2,900 basic education schools in the region, in which nearly 2.25 lakh student are enrolled. Moreover, as TOI reported earlier, basic education students have also not got sweaters which they were supposed to get in October.