HYDERABAD: After Kerala and Karnataka, Telangana government is also planning to introduce ‘water bells’ in schools at regular intervals, to ensure that the children would get time to drink enough water every day.
Education Minister P Sabitha Indra Reddy on Thursday instructed all District Educational Officers (DEOs) to implement water bell in schools.
This was in response to a tweet by a TRS party activist Abdul Kaleem who requested the education minister to implement water bells in Telangana schools.
Kaleem tweeted on Wednesday, “Implementation of mandatory water bell will help our students to maintain health. Humbly request to please consider. @KTRTRS @SabithaindraTRS (sic).”
While the idea of ringing water bell is good, the State government needs to ensure that all schools have drinking water supply.
According to a note issued by the School Education Department earlier this month, there are 7,372 government schools in the State that do not have drinking water facility.
Commissioner of School Education T Vijaya Kumar directed all DEOs to issue necessary instructions to headmasters of such schools to approach the government agency and apply for drinking water connection.
Chava Ravi, of the Telangana State United Teachers Federation (TSUTF) said, “We welcome the idea of ringing water bell as children often ignore drinking water in school. However, the State government has to ensure that drinking water connection as well as proper water storage facility is available in all the schools,” he said.
As on Thursday, School Education department officials said that they did not receive any official communication from the State government. Welcoming the idea, Hyderabad DEO B Venkata Narsamma said, “It would be a great idea to have water bells in schools. As of now, schools have two short breaks of 10 minutes each, apart from the lunch break but students ignore drinking water during these breaks. The water break needs to be given separately,” she said.
Unique initiative by Kerala
Kerala schools provide a unique interval called ‘water bell’ to students every day at a fixed time.
During these breaks children are asked to drink water, which will prevent dehydration and urinary infections among them due to low consumption of water.
The water bell will ring twice or thrice to alert students to drink water.