The Indian Express 23.12.2013
AMC school board moots budget cut for next year
The Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) School Board has proposed to slash its budget by Rs 38 crore for the academic year 2014-15. This has been done by cutting down chunks of expenditure on student development and teacher related activities, even as the "establishment costs" increased substantially.
The school board has come out with a relatively smaller annual budget of Rs 612.95 crore for accounting year 2014-15, which was presented in a meeting of board members presided over by chairman Jagdish Bhavsar.
This is much below the budget of Rs 651-crore passed in 2013-14, admits Bhavsar while simultaneously saying that the exact size of the budget will be declared later.
Interestingly, the proportion of money allocated for "student development" in the proposed budget has dipped from 3.43 per cent in 2013-14, to 2.44 per cent in 2014-15. Even the funds allocated for "education and teacher related activities" have dipped from 4.3 per cent to just 1.62 per cent in 2014-15.
"The reason for the cut next year's size of the budget is due to the reduction of Rs 2.2 crore in establishment expenditure, cut in salaries of teachers by Rs 3.73 crore and reduction in payment of Rs 18 crore toward pensions," says Bhavsar.
Over 92 per cent of the proposed budget — amounting to Rs 565 crore — will be spent as establishment expenses. Remaining 3.72 per cent of the total amount has been allocated for schools and office expenses.
"Out of total amount of Rs 612 crore proposed, expected share from the state government is Rs 459 crore and municipal corporation Rs 153 crore," said Bhavsar.
Under new projects, an amount of Rs 7-crore has been proposed for special type of benches for students of Class I-V and an amount of Rs 6-crore for municipal school board building while Rs 21 lakh for students' health schemes.
This proposed budget will be sent to the AMC's standing committee which after approval will be discussed by the municipal board in the coming weeks.
