No girls’ toilets in 140 Haryana govt schools

5,000 GIRL STUDENTS AND HUNDREDS OF FEMALE FACULTY MEMBERS AFFECTED, REVEALS GOVT REPLY TO RTI QUERY

ROHTAK:: Around 140 government schools in Haryana do not have toilet facility for girls, the state government said recently in reply to an RTI query, citing official UDISE report of 2016-17.

The UDISE (Unified District Information System for Education) report is yet to be published online by the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) as it awaits compilation of data from three states.

The reply stated that seven girls’ schools and 132 co-educational government schools in Haryana do not have the toilet facility in their premises, affecting more than 5,000 girl students as well as hundreds of female faculty members who teach in these schools.

The absence of toilet facility has been found to be a major factor in high dropout rate of girl students from schools.

Interestingly, even as the state government laid an immense focus on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and Beti Bachao Beti Padhao scheme, the number of schools without toilets almost doubled in the past one year. The UDISE report of 2015-16 mentioned 85 schools (all-girls’ and co-ed) in Haryana that did not have girls’ toilets.

Sources in the data collection team attributed the lack of maintenance of toilets behind the increase in number of schools without the facility.

“There are many schools where toilets become non-functional due to lack of maintenance. Such schools with nonfunctional toilets for many years are gradually counted in non-toilet list,” an employee associated with UDISE said.

In 2015-16 report, 51 schools did not have functional toilets for girls. The list of non-functional toilets this year was not given in the RTI reply.

When contacted, Haryana education minister Ram Bilas Sharma said the government is constantly building toilets in schools.

But on being asked how the number of schools without the facility is higher than the last year, he disconnected the call on some pretext.