Yawning civil tongue-civic sense gap!

Red alert: Girl students of a government school in city fraught with health hazards

By our Staff Reporter

GUWAHATI, Dec 22: Lack of civic sense is jaw-dropping, as often as not, in Guwahati where litterlouts do all the mischief – some openly and some by stealth. Lack of timely garbage disposal by the civic body in the city also adds to the situation.

The students of Rajgarh Girls’ High School, set up way back in 1965, are at the receiving end of the sheer lack of civic sense, glaringly visible. The school has a big garbage pit close to it, separated only by a wall that allows viewers to see above the window level of the school building. The fence wall, in no way, can prevent the stench that is emated from the dump. There is no garbage bin to have been placed by GMC near the school. This dump, however, looks much bigger than GMC dumps that are emptied at some irregular intervals in Guwahati.

The situation is neither conducive for teachers nor their taught. Nor is the situation conducive for any teaching-learning activity either, vital all for schools. They, both teachers and taught, have to hold their noses every now and then when the foul smell of stale food stuff and other leftover waft out from the garbage heap. For flash floods in the area the Guwahati Development Department is blamed, for obvious reasons. However, who is to be blamed in this instant case? Don’t residents, who are vocal in blaming powers that be at Dispur, have nothing to do in such a situation?

Talking to this reporter, some of the teachers said: “The situation is simply unbearable. The residents here do the mischief. Some people going to offices on luxurious cars are seen to throw garbage packs in polythene bags here. They’re the respectable ones who always keep a civil tongue on their heads. This is not a GMC garbage dump, but the local residents have made it seem so. I think they don’t have to send their children to this school. They may think, why should they be so careful for the wards of the poor? What an erosion of social value!”

Some of the local residents, when asked, have the common response ‘some people do throw garbage here, but haven’t seen anyone’. The school magement committee could have keep an eye on the matter and take some corrective measures. Despite efforts, this reporter could not reach any of office-bearers of the magement committee of the school.