‘Our only source of income dried up after lockdown’

Gaighat, June 22

Private schools have started calling parents and guardians to pay fees during the lockdown in Udayapur.

Parents said schools had called repeatedly asking for fees, including admission fee. “I was called repeatedly to pay my son’s fee from his school,” said a person, on the condition of anonymity in Gaighat.

Triyuga Municipality-based Crimson Boarding School Proprietor Suman Chaudhary said his school had requested parents to pay the fees of the lockdown period and other dues as the school was facing a hard time financially.

“We were forced to ask for fees to pay salary to teachers and staffers as the government didn’t help the school,” said Chaudhary.

Fee collected from students is the only source of income of the school. But, we have not been able to collect fee since the lockdown was imposed. Thus, we are experiencing big financial crisis, said Laligurans Boarding School Founder Mithila Rai in Gaighat.

Rai bemoaned that the school would incur heavy financial loss if schools were to close for a few more months. “We have to pay salary to teachers and other staff. But, the income source has dried up. Thus, we have no choice but to ask parents to pay the fee,” said Rai.

PABSON Udayapur Chair Prakash Basnet said as many as 3,500 teachers were working in 80 private schools in the district. Basnet added that they had no choice but to shut down the schools, if schools did not open from now onwards and parents did not pay the school fee.

A version of this article appears in e-paper on June 23, 2020, of The Himalayan Times.