Former students besiege Ministers for free laptops

When Ministers Vellamandi N Natarajan and S Valarmathi were in attendance at Srirangam Girls’ Higher Secondary School in the district to start the day’s distribution of free laptops, they were stopped by the group who claimed that they were not distributed the laptops under the scheme last year.

The protesting youngsters said that they were promised by the officials that they would be given the laptops even if they complete schooling as there were some issues cited related to administrative problems. “Since we were promised and this is the first distribution programme, we came here anticipating that we would be given the free laptops. However, we were disappointed that our names were missing from the beneficiaries list,” one of the youth who was present at the school said.

According to sources, the students who were not given laptops earlier were asked to come when there was such a distribution programme scheduled in the school. “Though we were not invited officially, we heard that there was a distribution programme, and so we reached here with the hope that we would be provided with the laptop as was promised earlier,” another protesting alumnus said. Since their names were missing in the list, those 30 alumni students who came to the school on Saturday besieged both the Ministers and demanded to distribute free laptops to them too. However, officials intervened into the matter and Minister Natarajan then promised them of providing free laptops in another occasion, upon which the students left the place, sources said.