Telangana plans to form safety clubs in educational institutions

The clubs will focus on six aspects – safety against sexual abuse, substance abuse, cyber safety, hostel safety, transport safety and traffic and road safety.

Hyderabad: The State government which has taken safety and security of students in the educational institutions as paramount importance, is planning to form safety clubs in government, government aided, and private schools, colleges and universities. These clubs will work closely with local jurisdictional police — law and order, and traffic.

The clubs will focus on six aspects – safety against sexual abuse, substance abuse, cyber safety, hostel safety, transport safety and traffic and road safety.

Towards this, Education Minister P Sabitha Indra Reddy along with DGP M Mahender Reddy, Telangana State Council of Higher Education Chairman Prof. R Limbadri, top police officials and Universities Vice Chancellors held a meeting on ‘Security measures and support system for students in Educational Institutions’ here on Thursday.

Each club will comprise five or more students as members including captain and vice-captain. As per the initial planning, a three-tier structure – Institutional, District and State Level committees will monitor the clubs. The State level monitoring committee which will be headed by the Education department secretary will issue necessary policy and guidelines framework to the district committee.

For students actively taking part in the clubs, the officials are planning to award a certificate of participation besides rolling out a credit system based on the hours of volunteering.

The Minister instructed officials to bring changes in the system followed in educational institutions while taking security measures. She also instructed the Council to constitute a committee with the Education department and the Police department to frame guidelines for bringing an Anti- Ragging Act.

Speaking to press persons, Prof. Limbadri said that in view of increasing cybercrime, and cases of substance abuse among the youth, discussions were held at length on how to create awareness and tackle such issues in the educational institutions.