In a bid to check the school dropout rate among girls who can not pursue higher education for want of shelter in cities, Maharashtra government today approved setting up of new hostels catering to them.
Government also decided to ramp up expansion of premises at the existing state-run higher educational institutions. The new construction and expansion plan aims at benefiting as many as 2,250 girls seeking higher education.
This decision was taken in today's cabinet meeting chaired by Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan.
Officials said the state government decided to initiate these steps to bring down dropout rate among girl students and in turn improve their education level as parents from rural areas usually shy away from sending their daughters for higher education in cities due to shortage of hostel facilities.
Accordingly, Ismail Yusuf College in Mumbai will have a new hostel with capacity of 320 and Deccan college in Pune with capacity of 500.
Similarly, new hostels will come up in Aurangabad, Jalgaon, Nanded, Solapur, Panvel, Gadchiroli and Jalna and existing facilities at Aurangabad, Nagpur, Kolhapur and Amravati set to be upgraded.
"As many as 2,250 girls will be benefited," officials said, adding students from government colleges as well as private educational institutions will be admitted in hostels.
Each hostel will have 8 new posts and a staff of 19, they said.
The state government will spend Rs 70 crore for building the new facilities, which will burden the state exchequer to the tune of Rs 2.7 crore every year, according to officials.
At present, there are 31 government-run colleges in Maharashtra and a total of 52 hostels out of which 27 are for girls.
