By Kokila Dhakal
Ilam, Aug. 26: The Ilam municipality has started looking for alternatives of education for school-level children after the COVID-19 infections did not decrease till the last week of August.
Last year, it was decided to teach students on the basis of internal assessment for secondary students, but this year, they have started looking for alternatives as the environment for internal assessment is not appropriate, said Mayor of the municipality Mahesh Basnet.

“Last year, schools were open for a short period of time, so it was easy for internal assessment but the school might not open this time, so we are looking for alternatives,” Mayor Basnet said.
The executive meeting of the municipality has formed a committee to collect suggestions on how to conduct alternative studies, he informed.
It is said that the committee has two officers of the eighth and tenth levels under the coordination of the chief administrative officer of the Municipality. They have started collecting suggestions from the concerned bodies including parents, students and teachers.

Suggestions will be collected within seven days and the committee will submit a report to the executive within the next 15 days. The municipality made the seventh amendment to the education regulations only on August 4. However, the municipality has decided to move ahead with another amendment for the alternative education of the children by taking suggestions on the same amendment without implementing the rules after the COVID-19 infection remains as usual, said Basnet.

Many children in the village have been working at their houses as they do not have to go to school. Children in urban and market areas, on the other hand, spend their days playing games on mobile phones. “There is no situation to open school and the school also does not give any instructions to the teachers to conduct the online classes,” he said.

Jhuma Kattel, a teacher at Adarsh High School, Ilam, said, “Children in the market area spend their time in free-fire and other online games." The situation is getting worse. "Mobile games and social media like YouTube and TikTok can cause long-term effects in many children,” Kattel said.

The problem is not only for a single municipality but also in the entire district. Puja Chapagain, a tenth-grade student of Maijogmai-5, has not been able to see all the textbooks of her class till now. “I have only four books. It is unknown that when the other books will come and I will get to read,” Chapagain said.
Meanwhile, other local levels of the district have not been able to reach an aggrement on how to educate the children.