No sanitary staff in govt schools, students forced to ‘sweep’ floors

Tribune News Service

Jammu, January 3

In Jammu and Kashmir, students of some government schools are forced to clean the premises as the state does not have budgetary allocation to hire sanitation staff.

If officials in the Education Department are to be believed, nearly 99 per cent of government schools do not have staff for cleaning of classrooms, forcing students to do the job of the cleaning staff.

“It is not just on the academic front that government schools fare badly due to lack of teaching staff, the cleanliness aspect, too, has been completely ignored by the state government because it does not have adequate budgetary allocation to hire staff for the cleaning purpose,” an official said.

Last year, the state government claimed that around 17,506 toilets were constructed in government schools under the Centrally sponsored scheme Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and 2,555 under the Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan in the past two years. But to maintain cleanliness in these toilets and in the existing ones in government schools, there are no cleaners as majority of the schools have to rely on staff contribution to engage persons from outside.

Chief Education Officer (CEO), Samba, Rampal Bal admitted the unavailability of staff in government schools. “Without any doubt, the government schools, especially primary and middle ones, are struggling with poor sanitation because of the unavailability of cleaners. High and higher secondary schools somehow manage on their own by arranging sweepers from the municipality but overall, the situation is bad,” the CEO said. Bal further said even the CEO office did not have a permanent cleaner and the department hired sweepers from outside to clean the office.

Rajouri CEO Lal Hussain said around 60 per cent of schools did not even have water facility. “Forget availability of cleaners in schools, there is difficulty in getting water also. Old ways of carrying water in buckets to toilets is still prevalent in government schools. There are no funds to clean the toilets,” Lal Hussain added.

The situation is bad in Reasi district too where a majority of primary and middle schools are in a pathetic condition. CEO Bishan Singh said, “At high and higher secondary levels, the staff sometimes contributes from their own pocket to arrange a person to clean the toilets but primary and middle schools are the worst affected.”