Hindustan Times: Haryana: Sunday, September 17, 2017.
Around 140
government schools in Haryana do not have toilet facility for girls, the state
government said recently in reply to an RTI query, citing official UDISE report
of 2016-17.
The UDISE
(Unified District Information System for Education) report is yet to be
published online by the National University of Educational Planning and
Administration (NUEPA) as it awaits compilation of data from three states.
The reply
stated that seven girls’ schools and 132 co-educational government schools in
Haryana do not have the toilet facility in their premises, affecting more than
5,000 girl students as well as hundreds of female faculty members who teach in
these schools.
The absence
of toilet facility has been found to be a major factor in high dropout rate of
girl students from schools.
“There are
schools where toilets become non-functional due to lack of maintenance. Such
schools are gradually counted in the non-toilet list.”
Interestingly,
even as the state government laid an immense focus on Prime Minister Narendra
Modi’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme, the number of
schools without toilets almost doubled in the past one year. The UDISE report
of 2015-16 mentioned schools (all-girls’ and co-ed) in Haryana that did not
have girls’ toilets.
Sources in
the data collection team attributed the lack of maintenance of toilets behind
the increase in number of schools without the facility.
“There are
many schools where toilets become non-functional due to lack of maintenance. Such
schools with non-functional toilets for many years are gradually counted in
non-toilet list,” an employee associated with UDISE said.
In 2015-16
report, 51 schools did not have functional toilets for girls. The list of
non-functional toilets this year was not given in the RTI reply.
When
contacted, Haryana education minister Ram Bilas Sharma said the government is
constantly building toilets in schools. But on being asked how the number of
schools without the facility is higher than the last year, he disconnected the
call on some pretext.
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