Kids forced to drink impure water in municipal schools

The recent incident of deaths of 22 children in Bihar’s Chapra district after having midday meal has brought the spotlight back on the quality of food served in government schools.

However, the condition of drinking water in municipal schools in Delhi is not better either.
With the civic bodies failing to install water purification systems in their schools, the students are forced to drink unhygienic water stored in the overhead tanks.

Students in several municipal schools have no choice but to drink untreated water because out of the total of 1,200 schools, only 350 have water purification facilities across the three corporations.

Sources said the water tanks are barely cleaned.

No regular checks

What makes the matters worse is the fact that only random checks of water samples are conducted in the residential areas where the schools are located, but no regular sample checking is done in the schools.

Mahender Nagpal, leader of house in north corporation and former chairman of education committee of unified MCD, said the unified MCD had started the process of installation of water purifiers in schools two years ago.

Ironically, the process is still not finished.
“Majority of school offer untreated water. Trifurcation of MCD last year had stalled the process of installation,” he said.

Dearth of purifiers

The north corporation has 784 schools under its jurisdiction and only ten percent of them have water purification facility.

“The tender process has been initiated for installation of 400 purifiers and it would be complete in next few months,” said Ram Kishan Bansiwal, chairman of education committee, North Corporation.

Sources said the situation is no better in south and east corporations.
“I cannot tell the exact number of water purifiers installed in the SDMC schools but around 50 schools inspected during last one month have them,” said Sushil Singh, director (education), SDMC.

Provision of safe drinking water gains more importance during the rainy season as the propensity of spread of water-borne diseases like cholera and diarrhoea is high now.