Jaipur: In a bid to control the menace of coaching students suicides, the Kota district administration has now decided to give a 15 digit alpha - numeric unique ID number to the students arriving in Kota for the preparation of engineering and medical entrance tests.
“From July 15, the coaching institutes will prepare a mechanism and give a unique ID to the students at the time of admission in the coaching institutes. It will be an alpha-numeric number, which will give coaching students a special identity and help the administration track the students," said District Collector Dr. Ravindra Goswami while addressing a meeting of officials and coaching institutes recently.
The Kota district administration is working on a digital portal through which all the coaching centers and hostels, and each of their students, will have to register themselves with the local administration when they first arrive in Kota. It will help the administration track every student during the entire period they study in Kota. This portal will help build a database of the number of students annually arriving in Kota, their backgrounds, and their attendance in the coaching centers and hostels. The ID will build a centralized system that will continue the tracking even if a student switches to a different coaching center or hostel and leaves the city in the middle of the course.
The institutes have been asked to make a system of daily attendance in the classes, and if a child does not attend the class continuously for 3 days, the institute will have to find out the reasons, and if there is any suspicion, it will inform the district administration and police so that necessary steps can be taken in time.
At least 13 students preparing for the National Eligibility Entrance Test (NEET) or Joint Entrance Examination (JEE) in Kota have died by suicide so far this year. The corresponding figure was 27 last year, the highest since 2015.
Looking at the number, this time the administration is focusing on the separate councilling of parents also to tell them about the other options.
“Students and parents will be provided information about other career oriented courses so that instead of getting disappointed on not clearing NEET-JEE, students remain positive and can look forward to other options to move ahead in life,” said Goswami.
As most of the students in Kota are from other states or cities and loneliness has been found to be a major reason behind the extreme step of students, the administration has asked the institutes to send their teams comprising people of their top management to the hostels of the students.
The collector said "personal touch is also necessary to make the students studying away from home feel a sense of belonging. The persons from the top management of the coaching institutes should go and meet the coaching students in the environment where they live.
“The District Collector said that a policy of fee refund along with easy exit should be made for the students who are given mandatory deportation. He directed to ensure compliance with anti-hanging devices, security guards, CCTV etc. in every PG along with hostels. Besides, instructions were also given to keep drop boxes for complaints, display police helpline numbers and control room numbers. He asked the coaching institutes to collect information about the address of the PG and the phone number of the operator etc. from the students who are staying in PG and give it to the district administration.
Dr. Goswami sought a report regarding the efforts made in providing mental support and security to the students and the steps taken in compliance with the guidelines issued by the district administration, He directed to issue notices to hostels, PGs and landlords who do not follow the guidelines of the district administration. He said that action will be taken to seize hostels, PGs etc. that are continuously disobeying. A list of operators who are not cooperating should be made and given to the district administration.
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