Market under school eaves!

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, March 26: A market under school eves! Unfenced and unprotected, an ME school and a high school, housed in the same campus at Ramkrish Mission Road at Ulubari in Guwahati, look like sitting ducks. The scene speaks volumes of the very type of school infrastructure made available in the State.

Set up way back in 1965 at Kacharibasti in the Ulubari area in the city, Jajatiya Night High School has to travel a long way, without success. It has been a victim of apathy from Dispur.

In 1980, the government provincialized the ME section, leading to the bifurcation of the school into – Jajatiya ME School and Jajatiya High School. The two schools were then shifted to another site at Ramkrish Mission Road at Ulubari in the city in 1986. While the High School converted to day shift in 1987, the ME school changed to day shift in 1990. The high school is yet to be provincialized.

The plight of the school campus makes people shaking their heads in disbelief. Neither of the two schools has any fence. The high school was fenced in the front side with some CI sheets. However, in 2016 the PWD dismantled the fence while constructing the road there, as though to level up the facility with the ME school in the campus. The in-charge headmaster of the high school, Samindra th Haloi, said: “I’ve no money to fence the school compound. We’ve only nine teachers against 76 students. The headmaster and the Sanskrit teacher have been ailing.” 

Heaps of debris, comprising dugout soil and leftover concrete materials mixed with bitumen, were left behind in front of the high school by the PWD workers. 

The headmistress of the ME school, Manju Devi, said: “There’s a market on the footpath in front of the school. Since the school is left unfenced, the students get an open view of all that’s happening in the market. When there’re holidays or when the school broke, both traders and others just litter their trash around in the campus. They even don’t hesitate to answer to the ture’s call in the school campus. An atmosphere conducive for imparting education is what we’ve been hankering after since the inception of this institution.”

The headmistress further said: “We don’t have any kitchen for cooking mid-day meal. We’ve to cook mid-day meal in a classroom. This apart, we’ve been doing without any Hindi teacher since 2011. We’ve only five teachers, including one attached, against 35 students.”