Classes held at gurdwara

Manav Mander

Tribune News Service

Ludhiana, July 20

Students of Government Primary School, Jahangirpur, have found themselves without a classroom for a year now as the school building was declared unsafe by the People Works Department (PWD) last year. Since then, classes are being held at different places.

In July last year, the PWD, after inspecting the school, found that six rooms in the school building were unsafe as cracks had been developed in the walls at many places. Besides, ceilings were leaking and plants had made their way into the ceilings, where algae had grown on the walls.

The school building has seven rooms, in which classes run from Class I to V with a class each for pre-primary students and children with special needs. Of the seven classrooms, six have been declared unsafe by the PWD. After the building was declared unsafe, the state Education Department wrote to the school head to vacant the building, put a lock on the same and was asked to hold classes in a nearby gurdwara or dharamshala so that accidensts could be avoided.

A year has passed by but the problems of students and faculty have only aggravated. Now, some classes are being held in the langar hall of a gurdwara, some in the open at the porch of the school and one in the school room which is safe.

Manmohanjit Singh, principal of the school, said the Education Department had asked him to shift the classes to a gurdwara. “We initially took all classes in a gurdwara but that was not viable for us as sometimes there used to be a function going on at the gurdwara and students had to wait for it to get over. Many a time, an entire day got wasted because of this. It is not possible for me to accommodate 250 students every day in a langar hall. The Department should issue a grant and get the building dismantled so that a new structure can be constructed,” he said.

A student of primary section said: “Whenever it rained, I missed the school because classes were not being held in the school and we had no fixed place to study on that day. Time was generally wasted on a rainy day”.

When Rajinder Kaur, District Education Officer (DEO), Elementary, was contacted in this regard, she said: “I will personally visit the school in a day or two to look into the situation and further action will be taken accordingly.”