Toilet fiat kicks up stench in schools

Ranchi, Nov. 5: Government officials went gaga in schools over Global Handwashing Day on October 15, but the Supreme Court ruling on October 18 that directed all states to come up with permanent toilets in every cradle by December 31, 2011, has left them cold. Why? The first they knew was tokenism. The second is a Herculean task. There are no functional toilets in more than half of Jharkhand’s 40,000 government schools. The apex court bench headed by Justice D.K. Jain asked all states and Union territories to construct toilets at every school, temporary by November 30 and permanent by December 31. This prompted responses ranging from desperation to disbelief. “How can the state get toilets ready in a couple of months when it couldn’t do it in a decade after its separation from Bihar?” asked a human resource department official. Surprisingly, there is no shortage of funds, only of will. “Crores reach the state under the Union ministry of rural development’s total sanitation campaign, which advocates toilet facilities for schools and anganvadis. Construction of toilets falls under sanitation,” said an HRD bureaucrat not wishing to be named. But top officials either could not be reached for their comments or washed their hands of the matter. D.K. Saxena, director of both primary education and Jharkhand state education project, couldn’t be reached despite several attempts. HRD secretary B.K. Tripathy expressed his ignorance about the apex court ruling. “We are yet to get an official communiqué. If there is an order, we will abide by it. As of now, we haven’t exercised our brains to pursue this,” he said. Government records classify school toilets in three categories — common, girls and boys — but the figures raise quite a stench. According to data, 30.37 per cent of 40,000 state-run schools have common toilets, but only 38.77 per cent function. In other words, 12,000 schools have common toilets, of which a little over 4,000 are in good shape, which means a whopping 90 per cent of the common lavatories don’t work. There’s more. In the 20,000 schools with girls-only toilets, 53 per cent or a little over 10,000 are functional. And in the 12,000 cradles with boys-only toilets, 72 per cent work and 3,000-odd don’t. The bleak figures point to many bottlenecks. Water supply to rural areas is poor, there aren’t enough cleaners. “Schools across the state are severely short of teachers. Buildings are in a shambles. No one is bothered about toilets,” said the official. In the next two months, however, Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan under Jharkhand Education Project is mulling 1,200 new toilets for girls in the state’s urban pockets. “The main purpose of SSA is to ensure that classrooms, textbooks, etc, exist in schools. However, it is trying now to bring issues such as water and toilets,” said the official.