BENGALURU: The Primary and Secondary Education Department needs `107 crore immediately to take up repair, renovation and re-construction work of 8,487 government school buildings in the state. The proposal was placed by the department before Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy in a recent meeting with the Deputy Commissioners of all districts and Chief Executive Officers of Zilla Panchayats.
The details, available with The New Indian Express, show that the funds are required to upgrade both primary and high schools. According to the department, emergency repairs and renovation include fixing dilapidated walls, leakages in ceilings, doors for toilets, toilet buildings, broken floors and windows.
“These emergency repairs need to be done as early as possible because it is raining heavily in some districts and it is really dangerous to make students sit inside the classrooms,” a senior department official said.
As many as 7,001 primary and 1,486 high schools are in urgent need of repairs. Hassan district tops the list with 662 such schools followed by Mandya, Belagavi-Chikkodi, Kolar and Ballari. On the other hand, Kodagu has just 20 such schools followed by Bidar, Udupi, Gadag and Bengaluru North.
Department officials told Express that in cases of emergency, the Gram Panchayats and other local bodies can be approached for funds.
Safety Of Children
The sorry state of the schools is a question of safety of thousands of children who have to sit in the unsafe buildings every day. In 2016, the ceiling of a government school building in Madhugiri taluk had collapsed resulting in four children sustaining serious head injuries and 15 escaping with minor injuries.