On Wednesday, Telangana's Chinna Shankarampet village in Medak district witnessed a unique protest as teachers at a government school arrived with helmets on their head.
The move was not aimed at spreading road safety, but rather ‘head safety’, from falling objects.
The teachers claimed that the building of the Zilla Parishad High School was in a dilapidated condition, and that repeated attempts to highlight the issue had fallen on deaf ears, forcing them to participate in this protest.
The school teaches students from Class 6 to Class 10.
“The building is very old, and the problems were occurring year after year. Whenever it rains, the school either has to declare a holiday, or make alternate arrangements. We have approached the local MLA for funds, and we were assured that they would be sanctioned soon,” Shankarampet Sarpanch, SS Kumar Goud, said.
While the building was already crumbling, the rains that lashed across the state in the past two days, have made things worse.
The teachers decided to protest after debris from the roof fell on one of them, resulting in an injury.
“There are 664 students studying in the school, out of which 443 are boys and 219 are girls. Despite this, there aren't even proper toilets for the children. Last year, when authorities came for inspection, I had made a request and they had called for tenders. However, contractors did not come forward, stating that it was a very small-budget project,” Ramesh, the headmaster of the school, said.
“Whatever the reason maybe, it is the children who are suffering. I have even notified the District Educational Officer (DEO) about the incident. We have been suffering for three years, and hope that the issue gets resolved this year,” he added.
(This story was first published on The News Minute.)
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