Toilet for girls in every government school continues to be a distant dream, despite the Centre sanctioning projects for states and union territories. The highest number of government schools with no toilet facility for girls is in West Bengal, followed by Bihar and Andhra Pradesh, even as various studies have shown non-availability of this facility is one of the prime reasons for the girls to drop out.
According to the data with the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry, 22,124 schools out of 81, 729 in West Bengal do not have toilets for girls even as at least three districts of the state—Dakshin Dinajpur, Kolkata and Uttar Dinajpur— are in the list of 103 district in the country which have more than 10 per cent drop-out rates of girl students.
Bihar, where various initiatives were taken to improve enrolment of girl students in schools, especially when Nitish Kumar was the chief minister, continues to lag in the construction of toilets for them. The HRD ministry data show that 21,771 schools out of 70,479 do not have toilets for girls in the state.
Andhra Pradesh is also not very far from Bihar and West Bengal, when it comes to non-availability of toilets for girls in schools.
Out of 46,138 schools, 20,061 do not have any toilet for girls in the state, though the annual drop-out rate of children including girls at primary level in the state was 3.2 per cent in 2013-14, below the national average of 4.67 per cent.
“Enrolment and detention of children in schools has been one of the major focus areas in school education since the Right to Education Act came to force. Various studies have suggested that non-availability of toilets is one of the prime reasons that forces girls to drop out from schools but many states have failed to address this issue on a priority basis,” sources said.
Most states have failed to achieve target set for construction of toilets in schools even as projects were duly sanctioned by the ministry. “At a recent meeting here, all the states were asked to expedite the process of the construction of toilets,” the sources added.
As many as 18,343 of 58,380 schools in Odisha, 16,717 of 50,006 schools in Assam, 14,240 of 10,9792 schools in Madhya Pradesh, 13,954 of 29,376 schools in Telangana and 10,047 of 47,014 schools in Chhattisgarh do not have toilets for girls.
In Delhi, only four government schools out of 2,857 do not have toilets for girls while the number of government schools in Karnataka where toilet facility is not available for girls is just 73.
The Gujarat government has to construct toilets for girls in 1,008 schools in the state, Uttarakhand 1,322, Maharashtra 2,049, Meghalaya 3,848, Rajasthan 3,897, Tamil Nadu 4,439 and Uttar Pradesh 5,366.