A Government High School at Alagapuram Periya Pudur in Salem has been given a water purifier under the Education for All (SSA) programme. Photo: E. Lakshmi Narayanan / The Hindu
Thanks to a government scheme, many primary and high schools in Tamil Nadu’s Salem district now have installed water purifiers. For many village schools, however, the purifiers are of no use because they don’t have a water supply system.
The scheme is part of Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the government’s ‘Education for All’ Movement, that is being implemented in a majority of 1,721 primary, middle, high and higher secondary schools in the district. The allocation for primary schools is Rs. 5,000 [US$ 109], Rs. 12,000 [US$ 262] for middle and Rs. 7,000 [US$ 153] for both high and higher secondary schools were sanctioned. In addition each school gets Rs. 5,000 [US$ 109] per year for maintenance.
While many schools had been prompt in maintaining the water purifiers, a few schools had neither bought nor maintained them properly. A middle school in Kondalampatti had the purifier but did not have the provision for water supply to the school itself.
A school teacher said that the scheme, though laudable, could not be implemented totally in schools in villages since many of them did not have basic amenities such as water supply.
Source: The Hindu, 26 Nov 2010
This story traverses through the tragedy of poor coordination among agencies. In this case, had the SSA (Sarva Siksha Abhiyan) team contacted the entrusted water department (PHED-Public Health and Engineering Department) before the provision of treatment facilities, they could have worked as envisaged. Hence, without regular water supply, these treatment systems will become ‘dust bins’ or get enough dust to be cornered in dump yard in a school. Had there been linkages between health, nutrition, water, sanitation and education department, the scenario in our schools have changed over the years. The unfortunate part is that everyone wants to run his business as usual, and our communication channels are either defunct or not working, while the facilitating / technical support agencies are the spectators in whole gamut. The state of affairs is that, when we are not able to communicate within our own system (various departments of state and central government and international agencies i.e. Health, nutrition, water, sanitation and education), we in real sense are not equipped in communicating such messages at lowest level of governance.