Srinagar: The School Education Department has put lives of more than 200 students and of their teachers at risk by cramming them into a decrepit building that is about to fall apart.
Students of Government Primary School, Channa Mohalla, and Government Primary School, Watakullo, in Chrar-i-Sharief zone of Budgam were clubbed in 2015 and housed at Wudur Mohalla High School along with the students there.
Four years ago in 2011, the School Education Department had promised that the students of Wudur Mohalla High School would soon be shifted to a new building. As the Wudur Mohalla High School had been upgraded from a Middle School, construction of its new building, sanctioned under the erstwhile Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan (RMSA), was started at a patch of land nearby.
However, even after almost a decade, the department has not yet completed the construction work on the building, as a result of which more than 200 students of both the clubbed primary schools as well as of the high school are studying in the confines of an unsafe building.
A teacher said that the under-construction new school building is still without a washroom, while another teacher said that the new building has not even been furnished with glass window panes.
The teachers further complained that the department had put their and the students’ lives at risk as they have been forced to cram inside the old “unsafe” building. A teacher feared that the building can collapse anytime.
While the clubbed primary schools had an enrolment of more than 90 students, a teacher at High School Wudur Mohalla said that around 125 students were enrolled at the high school. Eight and three teachers, respectively, have been posted at the high school and the primary schools, a teacher informed.
At the high school, at least three classrooms have been rendered defunct over the years, a teacher of the school said.
Chief Education Officer Budgam Fatima Bano said she will look into the matter.

Irshad Khan