Mumbai: The students of a municipal school in Hanuman Nagar, Kandivali have been studying in a 40-year-old dilapidated school building. The school is facing problems such as lack of repair work, no proper ventilation, congestion due to adjacent slums, damaged ceiling and broken walls.
Since it the only municipal school in the area, residents feel the Brihanmumbai Muni-cipal Corporation (BMC) should take proper care of it. “Most parts of the area are covered by slums, and hence a majority of the parents prefer this school as it provides education from Class 1 to 10 in both Marathi and Hindi medium,” said a resident and parent. However, he continued, “Though the school has teachers, the infrastructure is poor, and it has been like this for many years now.”
The school has more than 1,000 students in Hindi medium and around 350 students in Marathi medium section. According to the parents, the school even have a virtual classroom for the students and computer room.
In March this year, the corporator of the area had informed the civic body about the school’s infrastructure.
Rajpati Yadav, a Congress corporator from Kandivali (West), said he had sent a letter to the BMC which was later transferred to the civic body’s School Infrastructure Cell (SIC), which looks into the engineering and repair work of the BMC-run schools.
“When the matter was forwarded to the SIC they initially said that all the repair work would be completed by Diwali as the children will have their vacation during that time. However, nothing was done even then, so the children have to sit inside that suffocating building,” Mr Yadav said.
Sanjay Kale, the sub-engineer of the school’s project from the SIC said they would start issuing tender from December 27. “We have started the tendering process, and three packaging process will be underway in January. As soon as the tendering is finalised, the repair and reconstruction work will be started,” Mr Kale said.
