Tarun Kartick & Mohammed Sajid
Port Blair, Nov 10: Believe it or not, in the modern age where India is dreaming to become a superpower and Andaman and Nicobar Administration is projecting these Islands as the one of the best governed UT/State, the students of one of the most prominent schools of Islands’ capital town, Port Blair, are forced to go to open to respond to Nature’s Call.
According to reports, the toilet blocks of Govt. Model Primary School, Aberdeen Bazaar is in highly dilapidated state. The students of the school are facing a lot of problems and because of the condition of the toilet blocks they are forced to go to open area to respond to nature’s call. The girl students of the primary students are worst suffer.
Condition is so bad that even for both ladies and gents teachers, there is only one toilet block.
The mockery of the system that the Model School is one of the schools, which comes under ‘Project Shikshottam’, in which schools are developed as a ‘Model’ for other school in terms of education, cleanliness etc.
Parents fear that the condition of the toilet block can anytime trigger an epidemic and may also cause serious health issues among the school students.
According to parents the Government Primary School Model, which runs in afternoon session has nearly 1000 students. The same school turns into Middle School for Hindi Students, and Primary School for Tamil and Telugu Medium Students in the Morning Shift, having a combine strength of nearly 140 students.
Sadly instead of providing, a sweeper for afternoon shift the Education Department has provided a sweeper for morning shift, who somehow sprays some water in the toilet blocks and store water for students in tank, early in the morning. Due to this cleaning work some students can use the toilet only for few hours and by the time the second shift starts the toilet blocks become completely unusable. Even there is no water in the water tank by afternoon.
When Andaman Sheekha contacted Mr. Uppu Swamy, JE, Directorate of Education to know why the toilet blocks are not repaired and why the construction works for a new toilet block has not begun yet, Mr. Uppu Swamy informed Andaman Sheekha that the proposal for building the toilet block is sanctioned and will now be transferred to the Chief Engineer, APWD office soon. He further informed that APWD will take about two months to start the tendering process and after that the work for the new double storied toilet block will be completed within six months of the date of award of tender.
Hope the files are moves as fast as Mr. Uppu Swamy and the Education Department expects and before next session students of the GPS Model get a new toilet block.
