Amid Covid spike, closure of coaching center; students asked to pay hefty amount

Srinagar, Jan 11: Following the government directives to switch the online mode of teaching in view of rise in COVID-19 cases, some private coaching institutes in Kashmir are forcibly asking the students to pay the hefty amount.

The news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO) has leant that the students are being forced to pay the hefty amount in the name of tuition charges that too at the time when the government has ordered the private coaching institutes to switch the teaching to online mode.

One of the students said, “I am pursuing NEET coaching in one of the leading private institutions wherein the management is forcing us to pay the charges at earliest. The compulsions were made after the government ordered them to change the mode of teaching from offline to online.”

The student said that earlier there used to be no such compulsion. “But, now they (management of coaching centers) seem to be insecure about the fee they collect from the students.”

Meanwhile, another 11th standard student told KNO that she is pursuing private coaching in one of the leading institutes.

“I have been pursuing coaching for only the past few weeks. For the past two days, concerned officials of the management at the coaching institutes have been entering class only to announce that they are collecting 60 percent of the charges,” she said.

In the meantime, when KNO tried to contact the concerned officials at Directorate of School Education Kashmir (DSEK), they did not respond to the calls from the reporter.

Pertinently, the government earlier this week has ordered the private coaching institutes of Jammu and Kashmir to adopt the online means to teach the students in view of steep rise in COVID-19 cases—(KNO)