BANGALORE: The Block Education Officer in Hospet has identified seven sites near the iron ore mines for starting mobile schools. The areas include Basaveshwara, Nagappa, Shankarnagar and Jambunatahalli.

Mobiles schools will also be started at Karenur and Ramgad area. All the schools will start functioning from next week, the Block Education Officer, Balraj, told The Hindu. The Block Education Office had initially planned to set up 15 schools.

The schools will teach the children the basics of language and numbers. The Block Education Office has already begun awareness programmes on these schools. "We all went to the mines and told the people we are going to start schools. Everyone seemed enthusiastic about the idea," he Mr. Balraj said.

At a meeting with social activists and Labour Department officials early last month, it was decided that mobile schools were probably the most effective way to motivate parents to send their children to school.

Parents' attitude

"The parents are scared to send their children to a far-away school. They prefer to keep an eye on them all the time and one way to do that is by making them work," said Haresh Jogi, member of Campaign Against Child Labour-Karnataka (CACL-K).

Don Bosco, a voluntary organisation that works in Jambunatahalli, also found that parents hesitated to send their children to school even if it is 1 km away from the mines. "They are willing to allow their children to study if schools are set up on the fringes of the camps," said Hyder, a volunteer with the organisation who goes to the mines every day and urges children to study.

Don Bosco will manage two of the mobile schools the Block Education Office is planning to set up in Jambunatahalli.

A study by CACL-K and Mines, Minerals and People in May reported that over two lakh children from the age of five onwards work in the mines. They help in cutting stones and carrying small loads of iron ore. Over five lakh persons work in the mines that stretch for over hundreds of acres. Most workers are migrant labourers who have been forced to leave their village due to drought.

Students of mobile schools will be issued a certificate of study. The certificate will have details of the student and the number of days he studied as well as the level of courses that he undertook. "We want to make it easy for the children to get to school once they go back to their home town. We want to prevent them from having breaks in their education," said Mr. Balraj.

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