Government Schools In Telangana Fail Sanitisation Test

Government schools across the State continue to lack sanitization facilities due to low budgets and insufficient staff to do it. Moreover, the overburdened staff given the additional task to sanitize the schools have mostly avoided it.

Sanitised Schools

According to a Times of India report, "In the last three to four days, attendance in our school has fallen from 80 per cent to 65 per cent as many are down with fever, cold, and other Covid- related symptoms. But even then, the schools have been sanitized", informed M Ravinder, a maths teacher in government schools in the city and vice-president of the Telangana Progressive Teachers Federation.

No Budget Sanctioned For Sanitization In Schools During Pandemic

Ravinder also added that the municipal staff could not be blamed for the misery. They are already burdened with the regular sanitizing duties and avoid taking up additional work. He also questioned the State's ignorance over the issue as the State-sanctioned no additional budget to hire a person for sanitizing schools.

Telangana has over 26,000 government schools with over 20 lakh students. Every year rupees 63 crores is sanctioned from Samagra Shiksha as the budget for sanitization in the government schools. During the pandemic, no funding was sanctioned. Instead, the state government had directed the municipal/gram panchayat workers to take care of the sanitization in schools.

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