Importance of Quality Toilet Infrastructure at Schools
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by
osaat
The fact is that most of the Government schools in India were build in the 1930s & 1940s. Since the buildings are over 70 years old, they have deteriorated to a state which is no longer safe for schooling activities. However due to lack of alternate options, the school management continues to run the schooling activities within these crumbling structures causing grave danger to the students and the faculty members.
The incident at Morarji Desai Residential School is very saddening. This child was the only child of her parents. Any dreams they may have had to see her grow, see her celebrate her birthdays and graduate and see her have a family of her own all are dashed. The child’s own dreams of whatever she wanted to accomplish are also dashed. The child’s death could have happened as a result of any unavoidable circumstance; but it happened due to something that was totally avoidable and for which the solution is within reach. Incidents such as this affect other students psychologically. It may not be surprising to see parents pulling out their kids from such schools simply for the fear of such incidents getting repeated. Also due to lack of better options, these kids could then be deprived of education for no fault of theirs. Today the incident happened at a school in Mulbagal, Kolar but tomorrow something similar or worse could happen at some other school due to the current infrastructure problem.
“OSAAT wants to make sure that no student life gets wasted because of poor school infrastructure”
We are committed to rebuild the infrastructure of rural schools in India. We want to make sure that the students are studying in a safe and strong environment. This is why we, at OSAAT, put our hearts and souls into the work we do. There are problems in the world that cannot be fixed easily – famine, war, rampant diseases, cruel governments, and so on. But this child’s death was avoidable. The news article says that there will be action taken against the contractor who built the wall, the person that rented the school building and so on. While all that is background noise, we look at working on the tangible solutions. We want to create a sense of enthusiasm among the students when they go to school and not worry about other aspects such as the school infrastructure.
When we decide to go ahead with a project, we not only look at delivering good quality classrooms for the students to study but also look at building quality toilets to make sure that incidents such as the one at Morarji Desai Residential School are avoided. When the proposal to construct the school at Nagavalli was accepted, we realized the importance of constructing quality toilets especially because of the number of girls in the school. We had come to know that girls would take hours to finish off their toilet breaks. Because of this, many girls avoided using the toilet provided by the school and would go back home to use the toilets after which they would mostly not return to the school. We wanted to make sure that students, studying at Nagavalli government school, get the required toilet infrastructure for their physical health and well-being perspective as well as for the emotional peace of mind for them and their parents. From this project on, we made it a point to build quality toilets in all the schools along with the school main building.
OSAAT is also working with many NGOs, that are focused on providing sanitation facility, to channel their resources to build quality toilets for other government schools, which lack the necessary toilet infrastructure.
Below are some pictures of the toilets that OSAAT has built for
Government schools at Nagavalli and Rampura.
