JOIN USNorth Corpn fails on safety for kids
It’s been four months since a school student was allegedly raped within the premise of a North Delhi Municipal Corporation school at Mongolpuri in North Delhi.
However, the civic body is yet to fulfil a volley of promises it made after the incident to ensure better security of students in its schools.
Apart from installing CCTVs in all its schools, the civic body had also decided to increase the height of boundary wall and fence them with barbed wires. However, all the promises continue to remain on paper.
However, civic body officers said tendering process of the civil work and installation of CCTVs is on and they will be put in place soon.
“The estimate of increasing height of walls and fencing them with barbed wires has been done. Tender process is on. The tenders for installation of CCTV were opened on Wednesday. Work will soon be awarded,” said engineer-in-chief of North Corporation, Anil Prakash. The corporation has made a budgetary provision of Rs 2 crore for installation of CCTV in all its 584 school buildings for the current fiscal.
A provision of Rs 2.4 crore has also been made to hire 584 security guards, both male and female, for ensuring better security of students. The process of recruiting guards is also under process, officers said.
Even maintenance work at several schools has not been completed. All maintenance work, including repair of ceiling, doors, toilets and electrical works, was to be completed in the summer vacation. However, sources in the corporation said, around 80 per cent of the civil work is still to be completed even as the schools reopened on Monday.
Officers said work could not be taken up as the bid called by the corporation failed to attract contractors.
“Around 90 per cent of bid had not got any response from the contractors, so the repair could not take off. One of the basic reasons for the lukewarm response is that amount of the repair works are not big, so contractors didn’t show interest,” an officer said.
The cost of repair works range from few thousands to one or two lakh rupees.