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| In last five years, mere 9 Anganwari centers provided drinking water facility by PHE | | Owing to non- performance on ground, GOI withholds funding, authorities in a fix | | PEERZADA UMMER
EARLY TIMES REPORT
JAMMU, Apr 26: What could reflect the sorry state of affairs in Jammu and Kashmir’s education scenario is the fact that more than 36 percent of the Anganwari centers in Jammu and Kashmir are running without even the basic drinking facility. Such a worrisome revelation is also putting a serious question mark on the functioning of the Public Health Engineering Department (PHE) in the erstwhile state.
According to the documents in possession of Early Times, against the target of 5136 schools, 4305 schools were provided drinking water facility during 2013-18 and 831 schools were yet to be provided the facility.
The documents reveal that just nine Anganwari centers had been provided the facility of drinking water during the last five years and at present out of the total 556 Anganwari centers functioning from the government buildings, 203 which is 36 percent of the total number are without the drinking water facility. Reports inform further that the targets fixed were very low and even the lower targets could not be achieved fully.
It was seen that the department had neither called for any data from the concerned departments (Education and Social Welfare) to arrive at the position of availability of the drinking water facility in the schools and the Anganwaris for compilation nor had fixed any targets for providing them the facility. During the exit conference, it was informed that the funds for providing piped water supply to schools and Anganwari centers were stopped by GoI from 2016-17. It was also stated that the Department has compiled a fresh list of 4158 uncovered schools and forwarded to the Education Department for release of Rs 32.36 crore, so as to provide piped water supply to all the uncovered schools.
Also, documents reveal that out of 8966 schools and 559 Anganwari centers, 1480 schools (17 per cent) and 203 Anganwari centers (36 per cent) were not provided any drinking water facility by the PHE Department or any other Department. It implies that the Department had not been serious in mitigating the water scarcity problem to the school-going children despite the programme being in operation for the last over 10 years. The funds for providing water supply to schools were stopped by GoI since 2016-17. Such an action by the government of India is reportedly due to the non-performance of the executing agency on ground.
Meanwhile, the dearth of basic facilities at government schools in Jammu and Kashmir is not new. In the study, ASSOCHAM has listed 10 states with poor electricity supply in schools. Jammu and Kashmir ranks fourth. The states topping the list include Bihar, with just 8.1% of schools having electricity, and Jharkhand (12.0 %) and Assam (15.9%). There are as many as 6000 schools in the state without electricity. The survey has also revealed that 75 percent of schools have no computer labs. Jammu and Kashmir has 232 such schools wherein toilet facility for children isn’t available and out of these 232 schools, 228 are located in Jammu region. |
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