A sorry tale of Morarji Desai schools

Lack of facilities and official apathy causing inconvenience to children

Lack of facilities and official apathy for the early shifting of school to newly constructed buildings has led to inconvenience to children. The pupils are facing the brunt of bad infrastructure in these schools.

Due to a lack of conviction among the elected representatives and social welfare department officials, the Morarji school students of Santhemarahalli are forced to attend classes in open grounds.

Though, the construction of the new building has been completed, the school continues to run in a rented building belonging to sericulture department.  The building has only four class rooms for 205 students. If few classes are held inside class rooms, the teachers are conducting classes in open for others for the past one year.

The government granted a Morarji school for Santhemarahalli in 2004-05. However, the resistance for land acquisition compelled the social welfare department to locate a land near Umathur and start work on the building.

For five years now, the students in this school faced a nightmare everyday in the rented building owing to poor bathroom and toilet facilities, dilapidated doors and windows of the building.

Girls studying here face everyday embarrassment to go to bathroom and toilets as they are without doors. A girl has to keep guard for another till the latter finishes bath, students say.

When contacted, school authorities say though the building was completed, it was not provided with electricity so far. Several plea to the officials of social welfare department has gone in vain, they reason.

Unfortunately, the students have not been distributed uniforms for the past two years, allege parents.

Unending woes
Meanwhile, the Morarji Desai school for Minorities in Gundlupet is also handicapped to cater to basic needs of the students. The woes have doubled here following the department’s decision to merge students of Therakanambi Morarji school following construction work on the Therakanambi school building.

The Morarji Desai school for minorities in Gundlupet originally has 67 students and eight teachers. However, the additional 185 students from Therakanambi school have put pressure on the available infrastructure.

The school is now running short of drinking water, toilets and bathrooms. Channaiah, extention officer told this newspaper that the students of Therakanambi school would be shifted to their place after the building work was completed. However, he did not specify any time for the transfer of the school.