The students of Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalay are faced with a peculiar problem. Hygiene has gone for a toss here as several students dread to take bath and they have a reason to do so. After taking bath many of them complain of rash and itching and the cause for this is polluted water.
L. Swati from Kishtapur village in Kalher mandal, who is now in tenth class has been studying in this school from fifth class. She says that water they use for bathing is polluted. Many students take bath once in two or three days due to the bad quality of water. Some students say that they got used to the water while others says that get a itchy feeling, rash and also bad odour after taking bath. Absenteeism from school due to skin problems has become a regular feature in this school.
This problem is not faced only by the students of the residential school but also by many locals.
They claim that groundwater in about three villages was polluted due to residuals being released by a pharma company located on the outskirts of the village. They are dependent on the water supplied by the company as the groundwater was not fit for consumption.
The Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalay functioning from a road-side rented building has 400 students and runs classes 5 to 10.
The school receives eight tanks of water, with each tank consisting of 16,000 litres, every month for cooking and drinking purpose.
According to V. Swarnalath, Principal, the school was getting monthly health checkups done for the students at the local Primary Health Centre and there were no major health complaints were notified.
Though a six-room building was constructed for this residential school at Hoti (K) on the outskirts of Zaheerabad for the KGBV, it was not sufficient to run the school with 400 student strength.
“We need at least 20 rooms and two dining halls to meet the requirement of students. Proper facilities were also not created at the school location and it was not possible to shift the students there. At the same time continuing here has also become a problem as the school rooms got reduced due in road expansion,” says Ms. Swaranalatha.
