No Toilets In UP Govt Schools In "Open Defecation-Free" India

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had declared on Gandhi Jayanti this year that rural India is now open defecation free. He claimed that around 11 crore toilets were constructed to make the initiative a success.

However, various instances have raised questions on the ‘open defecation free’ tag on rural India.

In Uttar Pradesh’s Siddharthnagar district, students and teachers in a government school are struggling as there is no toilet constructed within the school premises.This is in the Bansi area of Siddharthnagar district which is also the constituency of the state’s Basic Education Minister, Satish Dwivedi.

10 years down the line, there has been no renovation, and the infrastructure has been in absolute tatters and basic amenities such as toilets are lacking.

“We face a lot of problems every day, the biggest of which is that there are no toilets in the school. We have approached the authorities and nothing has been done so far,” a teacher from the school, Poonam Pandey, told ANI.

This is not the only issue. The roof of the school building also tends to leak during the rainy season.

The authorities have been informed about the issue. District Magistrate Deepak Meena said: “Under Operation Kayakalp, we are surveying the schools that do not have toilets and boundary walls. It is our target to provide basic amenities to all schools in the next six months. I hope in the coming days, we will be able to solve all issues.”

According to a Times Now report in 2018, schools run by the state government in Agra did not have toilets and some schools had to give a two-three-hour toilet break to the children.

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