17,000 government schools without boundary walls

Vikas Sharma

Tribune News Service

Jammu, July 31

Already struggling to provide basic facilities to students, around 17,000 state-run schools in J&K are still without boundary walls.

The sorry state of affairs can be gauged from the fact that the strength of government schools without boundary walls in J&K in 2016 was 13,893 which has now crossed 17,000.

Sources said Rs 43 crore (21.5 crore each in favour of Jammu and Kashmir divisions) was released by the government in March this year to upgrade over 2,300 state-run government high and higher secondary schools having poor infrastructure.

A major portion of the amount was spent on purchasing furniture items. The sources added a majority of state-run schools without boundary walls were in Kishtwar, Ramban, Rajouri and Poonch districts of the Jammu region.

Jammu district is having a strength of around 300 government schools which do not have boundary walls.

Satpal Sharma, Chief Education Officer, Jammu told The Tribune, “We sent a list of around 40-50 government schools to the authorities to construct their boundary walls but approval has been given only for 10-12 schools while other schools have no choice but to wait for their turn.”

“Even though there has been an improvement as compared to previous years, the lack of basic facilities is a cause of concern. In 2012-13, J&K was among the 17 states/union territories having the highest percentage of government schools without boundary walls,” a school education department official said.

Even after a gap of seven years, the government schools are without basic facilities like a boundary wall to protect from cattle and rainwater entering the premises.

Due to the absence of boundary walls, even a brief spell of rain is enough to turn the school playgrounds into ponds.