Mumbai: Claiming that some of those who fail the secondary school certificate (SSC) exam and sit idle at home for months could get lured into committing petty crimes, Vinod Tawde, minister for minority development and Wakf, on Monday said that the government will impart vocational skill training to those who flunk the matriculation examination.
“Failed students sit at home for a month and then start hanging out at the street squares where they get into the habit of smoking and drinking. To fund these habits, they become informers for chain snatchers and thus enter the crime world. Hence the state is trying to provide them skill development whereby they do not sit at home,” said Mr Tawde. “Now students failing in SSC will be given skill development so that they also go to school like those who passed,” said Mr Tawde.
Mr Tawde was speaking at the Minority Rights Day event held at Anjuman-e-Islam School at CST on Monday and stressed that the state government was intent on the minority community becoming an integral part of the growth of the nation.
“We have started this last year and have counselled 40,000 failed students and directed them to skill development programmes,” said Mr Tawde.
Speaking on the issue of minority rights, Mr Tawde said that there had been numerous schemes for the upliftment of the minority communities since the past 30 to 40 years, but bad implementation had kept the beneficiaries from taking advantage of it. He also said that the state should be taking up the issue of Minorities Act, which will safeguard the minorities from oppression and injustice just like the SC/ST Atrocity Act after the Maratha reservation issue was resolved.
Mohammad Hussein Khan, the chief of state minorities commission, said that as a minority community, Muslims were tortured for long, and the state government was taking steps to give the rights of the minority by forming the minority commission even before the United Nations realised the problem and recommended the setting up of a commission to address the minority community’s issues.
Dr Zaheer Kazi, chairman of the Anjuman-e-Islam group of institutions, said that it was keen to partner with the government in its skill development programme and had also started offering such courses for both boys and girls not only in Mumbai but other centres as well.
