School uniform material:

Over Rs 1,595 m allocated

Dharma Sri Abeyratne

The Government has allocated over Rs. 1,595 million for providing students with uniform material. Over four million schoolchildren in National and Provincial schools including student Bhikkus in Pirivenas will receive uniform material for year 2011. At the initial stage all Zonal Education offices will receive cloth through the countrywide uniform material distribution program, Education Minister Bandula Gunawardena said.

The Minister said so commencing the uniform material distribution program at the Education Ministry yesterday.

The government invests millions of funds for the betterment of the education sector since it is a future investment and it is necessary to create a knowledge based society.

“The uniform material will be distributed to 94 Zonal Education Offices throughout the country including the North and East and then the Zonal officials will take necessary steps to distribute cloth among students” Minister Gunawardena said.

The Education Ministry has planned to complete the distribution process before the end of the third school term so as to allow students to stitch their uniforms by the first term of the next year.

Under this uniform material distribution program, the Education Ministry will distribute 7 million parcels of cloth among four million students. Accordingly 11.1 million metres of cloth will be distributed. In addition 45,000 Buddhist monks studying in Pirivenas are offered saffron robe material. Besides 2.5 million Muslim school girls are given cloth for Purdah, the Minister added.

In line with Mahinda Chithana the Education Ministry will buy cloth only from local clothing manufacturers instead of importing from foreign countries. Earlier the Ministry bought cloth from foreign suppliers as the local manufacturers were not given priority. However the Education Ministry has taken steps to buy the entire requirement (11.1 million metres) of cloth from local manufacturers and suppliers for 2011.

In return the Education Ministry can reduce the uniform material purchasing cost by Rs 850 million by purchasing from local manufacturers comparing to the last year