Tabia Masoodi
Srinagar : The low speed internet in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir is taking a heavy toll on the academics of students as they are not able to download videos and login to online classes due to low internet speed.
Even though government has issued guidelines to education department for arranging online classes for all students amid Covid-19 lockdown but the low speed internet is taking a heavy toll on the academics of students here.
The government has restricted the internet speed to 2G citing security issues for restoring 4G internet speed in the union territory. “It is almost impossible to study and take online classes with such low speed when you cannot even download a document for hours, and with video chats it is a futile exercise altogether. At times we are not able to even login to online classes due to low speed internet here,” said Judat, a class 8th student from Anantnag.
No matter what type of lockdown Kashmiris are in, education becomes the first causality here and it continues to suffer even in these testing times. Though online classes were a good initiative but in JK it is a futile exercise as the internet speed has been restricted to 2G only, making students suffer a lot.
“I face a lot of difficulty while logging in to the online class and when I manage to do so, the video quality is so low and due to buffering I am not able to grasp anything. With 2G speed online classes are a futile exercise,” Judat told news agency—Kashmir News Observer (KNO)
Many students have left video classes due to poor connectivity and now they just take the material posted in WhatsApp groups and try to study themselves.
Fozaan Fayaz, a class 11th student from HMT, Srinagar said that he doesn’t understand anything through video classes due to poor video quality and he now studies from the study materiel posted in WhatsApp groups by his teachers.
Some students studying outside the valley who have returned home have to face a challenging situation as their classmates from outside the valley are taking their classes with high speed internet.
Talking to KNO, Wamik Aijaz, a resident of Anantnag, pursuing BBA at university of Huddersfield, UK is worried as he has to appear in online examination at the end of this month.
“I have to submit assignments and I am more worried about my examinations, it is impossible to appear in examinations with such a pathetic speed,” he said—(KNO)
