Muhammad Mukaram
Early Times Report
Srinagar, Nov 9: The Night Roaster Circular by the Education department for ensuring teachers give night duties have triggered major criticism and problems as most of the schools in the valley lack proper infrastructure including washrooms and electricity.
A teacher, wishing anonymity told Early Times ,who has been deputing for the night duty at one government High school has drawn flak from the teacher community by saying that neither their is arrangement of washrooms nor electricity in the school.
"The government High school lacks basic facilities like there is neither any washroom nor arrangement of that heating system even though the Kashmir is witnessing cold nights as the winter season has started. What can I do, I have to follow the diktats of bosses despite being so cold," teacher told early Times, who has spent a night in a school which lacks all basic facilities.
Another teacher who has given night duty told Early Times that, "I have faced a lot of hard problems, during night hours I was scared as school has no electricity."
A diktat issued from the Directorate of School Education, Kashmir, had asked teachers including the female staff to conduct night vigils against the torching of schools, but after faced lot of criticism over female staff's night duty, later government revoked the order of female staff’s night duty.
"I fail to understand how the department has issued the night roaster circular despite they know that several schools have not basic amenities, and government should re-think on it again while issuing such a harsh order," another teacher said.
Meanwhile on Monday the Jammu and Kashmir High Court directed the State government again to take all preventive measures to save school buildings from being burned by miscreants.
A division bench of Justices Ramalingam Sudhakar and A M Magrey while hearing a Public Interest Litigation, following suo moto cognisance by the High Court on burning of schools in Kashmir directed the state government that "setting the schools on fire is infact destroying the knowledge centers of future generations. It is the duty of the state administration to ensure safety of the schools which are treated as temples of learning."
The court had directed Chief Secretary, Director General of Police (DGP) and Director School Education to issue necessary instructions to all DCs, SSPs and CEOs of the concerned districts to take all necessary preventive and protective measures for saving the school buildings from burning.
However, The annual status of Unified District Information System for Education (UDISE) survey report 2014-15 shows, state of Jammu and Kashmir has a total of 29,047 schools, and however, 21,381 schools are bereft of electricity, 2,667 schools have no water facility.
"6,351 and 8098 schools don't have toilet facility for girls and boys respectively in the schools. Schools with having dysfunctional girls toilet are 2410, and 1807 are boys toilet," according to UDISE survey 2014-15. |
