Nagpur, Dec 7 (IANS): The Maharashtra Congress on Thursday backed Governor Ramesh Bais’ recent call to the government to consider changing the school timings for students to enable them get sufficient sleep.

Leader of Opposition (Assembly) Vijay Wadettiwar said that various parties have been raising this demand for several years, but the state government failed to heed it.

“What the government should have understood and implemented, the Governor has realised and called for giving relief to the student community to ensure their bright and healthy future. We want the school timings to be suitably changed from 10 am onwards,” said Wadettiwar.

In a positive suggestion that was hailed widely, the Governor this week urged the state education authorities that considering the modern times, most people including children remain awake beyond midnight, and then they have to get up early the next morning to go to schools, thus depriving them of the ideal 7-8 hours sleep daily and also reduce the burden of home-work and books while stressing on e-learning and e-classrooms, etc.

Lauding the Governor’s observations, Wadettiwar said that in most urban centres like Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Pune, Nagpur, Nashik, etc, the schools start around 7-8 am.

For this, the students have to get up by 6 am, and make a dash for school with or mostly without even breakfast but in cities like Mumbai, often the children have to commute long distances by multiple modes like bus, metro-rail, suburban trains and on foot to reach their academic classes on time.

Citing experts and psychiatrists, Wadettiwar said if the students are deprived of sufficient sleep, they may be affected by many physical-mental health problems, becoming prone to diseases, including serious ones like diabetes, blood pressure, etc., which are showing a marked increase in incidence among the youngsters in recent times.

Meanwhile, some academic experts have pointed out the Governor's suggestion, though welcome may not be feasible as most schools run in two shifts - one for the primary and for secondary sections, plus many other issues, which need to be considered carefully.