The Ahmedabad Municipal School Board has decided to open bank accounts for nearly 1.5 lakh students to enable direct deposit of scholarship and other welfare fund money due to them in their individual accounts. This will be without mediation of the respective school principals as was the case till now.

The bank accounts will be opened for all the students of municipal schools from the next academic year, said administrative officer Dr Lagdheer Desai. He added that talks were on with a nationalised bank for opening the zero-balance joint accounts of students and their parents.

At present, money is deposited in the bank account of the school principal concerned thereafter it would be withdrawn with signature of the principal and an assistant teacher in the school concerned, he said. This, he said, leaves a lot of room for financial irregularities and cases of embezzlement.

Desai said the current amount of scholarship money was around Rs. 4 crore, which was going to be raised to Rs. 11 crore from the next academic session. He said the bank with which talks were in progress has offered insurance cover of Rs. 25,000 for each student. This will be over and above the group insurance cover offered by the School Board, he added.

He further said that another advantage of this offer would be that students mainly hailing from the lower strata of the society would get an opportunity to get familiarised with banking procedures at a young age. He said the children would be free to choose a branch of their choice for logistic convenience. Source by Indian Express