After two weeks, teachers take up task of cleaning flood mess in village schools of Ajnala

Government Middle School, Macchiwal, has a small six-room building that is a centre of learning and education for over 71 students from the village and nearby shanties. The area is extremely backward, a few kilometers away from India-Pakistan border, and with a majority of population dependent on menial jobs for their daily wages.

When the floods hit the village after the breach in dhussi bundh, it wiped out almost all the homes and the middle school was among the structures that incurred the maximum damage. Weeks later, the school building bears signs of the deluge’s aftermath.

“We had six to seven feet deep mud, now turned into slush. Removing it from the classrooms took us days. But the ground and the surrounding areas of the school still have a lot of accumulated floodwater,” said Aarti, the school head and single teacher posted at the Macchiwal Middle School.

Along with Aarti, two mid-day meal workers, both elderly, come to school at eight in the morning to work on cleaning the campus. “We have to employ two men from the village to clean the mud as it’s a difficult task. Saara din lag janda hai, ghar v aehi, school v aehi (It takes the entire day, cleaning the home and then the school),” said an elderly mid-day meal worker, whose house is a few meters away from the school building.

The students of the school come every day to ask the workers, when it will re-open. “I am waiting eagerly for the school to start again. I have my Boards this year and I want to come back, but there is so much mud and the school furniture is also lying out in the open, broken,” said Aman, a student of Class 8 of the school. She and her mother are spending days working odd jobs and biding their time, until she is able to return to her classes.

Ajnala MLA Kuldeep Dhaliwal launched a large-scale cleaning campaign in the schools of flood-affected areas of Ajnala Block-2. The campaign will continue until all affected villages and schools are fully cleared of mud and stagnant water. He was joined by teachers and the local village youth club at the Government School in village Nangal Sohal, school teachers in Gaggomahal, Thobe, and other flood- affected villages, that are leading the cleaning efforts with full force.

“Government schools must be cleaned and the campaign completed within two weeks to ensure children’s education is not disrupted further. The Health Department is actively conducting fogging and anti-larvae spraying in the affected villages, and we have asked the school management committees to rope in the help of Panch-Sarpanch, besides village youth clubs for support,” he said.

Meanwhile, at Government Senior Secondary School, Gaggomahal, a fallen boundary wall and huge cracks that have appeared inside several classrooms are worrisome. “Due to the floodwater remaining stagnant here for more than seven days, the floors inside several classrooms have sunk, causing huge cracks to appear, on ceiling as well. As the days progress and water level recedes, these cracks are going to grow bigger. Add to it the seepage that has now appeared in all classrooms. It is going be unsafe for the students to use these classes now,” said Swaranjit Singh, Head, Government Senior Secondary School, also renamed as PM Shree School, Gaggomahal. The school has 20 classrooms, including three labs. “Two of our labs, including those for science and agriculture, are damaged as three to four inches of water still remains there. The computer lab somehow escaped the damage,” he said. They are using hosepipes to pressure-clean the mud, while the ground has turned into a marsh. Swaranjit Singh says that teachers have become an expert in catching snakes by now. “That’s what they have been doing for the past seven days.”

At Government Senior Secondary School, Thobe, that still has floodwaters on its playground and inside the campus, thieves broke in during the floods and stole two projectors and several other electronic items from the computer lab. “It’s a mystery how they managed to do that with three to four feet water accumulated there. They tried stealing the computers as well but could not do so, as they were already shifted to classrooms on the upper floors,” said campus manager Jaswinder Singh.