Being a parent is arguably the hardest job on the planet. You constantly worry about your kid’s safety while at school and outside it. If parents could, they would be happy to know where their child is at all times.

However, the Doha Modern Indian School’s (DMIS) plan to electronically tag its students and keep them under constant surveillance has come under a lot of flak from parents, reports The Peninsula.

A number of parents of DMIS students met officials of the Ministry of Education and Higher Education to express their distress over the issue.

The parents’ concerns range from violation of human rights to infringement of privacy to health risks associated with the new surveillance system.

With acute shortage of seats in Indian schools, parents are now being forced to pay a fee of QR1,200 per child per year for the service, which has been mandatory by the school.

DMIS had made it mandatory for all students to have the Student Tracking and Ridership Solution (STRS), based on Bluetooth technology, with real time visibility at its campus.

STRS uses Bluetooth Low Energy Technology on its tags, which communicate with Bluetooth beacons hosted around the school and in buses.

“The tracking system will help monitor students right from their boarding station. The tracking system in buses will help check if the child is entering the right bus and getting off at the right stop. Within the school, the system will mark entry of each student, and detect if students are elsewhere on the campus, when classes are going on,” an official told The Peninsula.

The school management argues that the system will discourage students from cutting classes and also prevent unfortunate incidents of children being accidentally left behind on buses.

However, many parents have voiced their concerns on having a radio-wave technology based surveillance system, that too at expensive rates, jeopardising students’ privacy.

“They are trying to impose the card on each and every students. What if a student disengages the chip and keeps it elsewhere? The school should’ve checked with parents first. The card is also rather pricey and parents will have to pay for this yearly or in case of any damage or loss,” said a parent.

Some feel that the use of micro-wave frequency devices will cause health hazard for children.

“The new system is like putting our children in a low power micro-wave oven for more than six hours. This is something we haven’t heard anywhere else in the world, and is hazardous to health,” said Mohammed Riyas.

“Moves to implement similar surveillance in different countries have been dropped due to various health and privacy issues. The school says that the system will help monitor toilet frequency, which personally is a human right violation. We had contacted the ministry officials who told us that the school presentation about the project did not show any possible health risks and hence a green signal to start the new system was given,” said Mohammed, another concerned parent.