This school runs from lone, unsafe room

Parvesh Sharma

Tribune New Service

Sangrur, February 15

Many parents of students of Government Primary School, Bhala Basti, did not send their children to school today due to rain as they did not want to take a chance with their ward’s safety. The school runs from a single “unsafe” room, which is being used for all five classes and to store mid-day meal material and other documents.

The school does not have any bathroom too and the open and choked sewage drain running adjacently has added to the problems. The school is designated as a central school which supervises the working of 10 other schools.

Schoolteachers said there were 57 students in the school, out of which 13 were in pre-nursery and the rest were studying in classes I to V. The school has been running from a dharamshala for the last 35 years and due to the lack of sitting and other facilities, the number of students has been going down. In 2008, there were 100 students and now there are only 57.

“I have come here to take my son with me because rain is about to start and the school has only one unsafe room, which can collapse any time,” said Surinder Kumar, a local.

During the rainy season, the verandah fills with water and teachers face problems in making space for all students in the lone room. “We are running a school from an unsafe room and the authorities are not giving us any grant because it is located in a dharamshala. We have written many times to our seniors to shift our school to the government library, which is lying unused, but to no avail,” said Sukhwinder Devi, incharge of the school.

District Education Officer (Elementary) Mukesh Kumar said that he had got to know about the school recently. “We will send their request to the higher authorities,” he said.