Demanding release of pending scholarship and jobs, tribal nursing students from Bastar and Sarguja registered a protest on Monday by ‘crawling’ to residence of Chief Minister in Raipur.
As per information, during the tenure of the BJP-government due to acute shortage of nurses in hospitals in tribal areas, around 68 tribal girls were selected for training in nursing under European Commission State Partnership Programme (ECSPP).
The European Union had released funds for scholarship to these girls but the scholarship was not disbursed. Due to financial difficulty only around 32 students could complete the courses while others dropped out. “Even the families of students who had completed the course landed in loan trap. The state government though claimed to have release the scholarship, students have not received it,” claims Communist Party of India secretary Sanjay Parate, who led the agitation.
Parate demanded action against those officials involved in harassing the tribal girls by not releasing scholarship for years and forcing other students to drop out from the course. The students demanded job as trained nurses in tribal areas apart from release of pending scholarship.
