A good number of children in the char areas of Sadar and Raipura upazilas of the district are being deprived of the right to compulsory primary education due to poverty, ignorance, shortage of schools and lack of communication facilities, reports BSS.
Several Union Parishad (UP) chairmen and members of those areas said each of the 14 unions of the two upazilas has 4,000 to 5,000 school going children in the age group of 6 to 10 while the number of dropout is 1,000.
They said due to geographical reasons, most of the people of the areas are uneducated and unemployed and they live an unplanned family life. So, the parents cannot afford their children's education.
On the other hand, there are no schools in 50 percent char villages of the upazilas. However, most of the children of these remote char areas are engaged in earning their livelihood by catching fishes or working in crop fields.
The UP chairmen and members said a nonstop operation of the government's Food for Education programme in the schools of these char villages will encourage guardians sending their kids to the schools.