BMC mulling transit camps outside schools

Mumbai: In a fresh move, the education department of the Brihanmumbai Muncipal Corporation (BMC) is mulling over setting up transit camps outside civic schools undergoing repair and reconstruction work. The objective is to shift students into these camps for a temporary period till work is underway to prevent them from missing classes.

Presently, whenever reconstruction of a BMC school is undertaken by the School Infrastructure Cell (SIC), the section where the repair work is being carried out is vacated and students are moved to nearby schools. An official from the department said, “Most of the time when this happens, parents stop dropping students to the other schools as they are far away or beyond 3km from the students’ houses. In other cases, students who are shifted to other schools do not return to the original school even after repair works are completed probably because they like it there. In the latter case, there is a rise in dropout rates, leading to closure of such schools.”

In order to avoid such circumstances, the BMC education committee has suggested to the education department to consider setting up transit camps or any kind of temporary shelter for students. “Either we will provide the camps outside the school building/campus or near the school which will be within 3 km. This will allow the teachers too to manage both lectures in the school under repairs and in the camp,” said the official.

In areas such as Govandi, Chembur and Kurla, a majority of schools are either dilapidated or need complete reconstruction. According to officials of the SIC of the BMC, in 2017-18, the unit managed to complete repair and reconstruction work of 65 schools in the Mumbai region. Still, repair work of around 90 schools is pending. They aim to complete all reconstruction by March 2018 so that they can wrap up work before  the beginning of the new academic year (2018-19).