Delhi: Building shut for repair, kids have to cross rail tracks, cross busy road to reach temporary school

Residents of Sanjay Camp in Chanakyapuri are concerned about the future of their kids as the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has decided to temporarily shut the primary school in the area for renovations.

The students have been shifted to the primary school under NDMC at Moti Bagh, until the school is renovated. However, parents are concerned about how the young kids will commute to and from the school.

For residents of the Sanjay Gandhi Camp, a slum cluster in Chanakyapuri, the primary school run by the NDMC in their backyard was a godsend, as they could easily send their young kids to school. Students would walk the few hundred feet by themselves to make it to school.

However, with the council temporarily shutting down the Nagar Palika Primary School Sanjay Gandhi Camp, Chanakyapuri, for renovation, working parents have been left floundering. The students have been shifted to the primary school in Moti Bagh, which is also run by the NDMC, until the school is renovated.

The students would either have to cross a busy main road, or cross an active railway track to get to their new school, and the commute has also been deemed dangerous for the young kids to make by themselves.

However, as most parents are daily wage earners, who provide labour to many of the foreign high commissions and embassies in the neighbourhood, they may not be able to escort their kids to school either.

“We may just have to not send our kids to school. How will we send them? Who will take them? We have to go to work. The older kids can go by themselves, but the younger ones may be run over by vehicles on the road, or may get trampled by a train if they take the railway track route,” said Rita Devi, the mother of two kids who used to attend the school.

NDMC officials have claimed that the renovation is being done because the school is situated right next to the toilet complex, and the students had to study while evading the stench from the toilets.

“The school for the time being has been shifted to Moti Bagh. This is done for the sake of students, as the current school building is right next to the toilet complex and classrooms tended to stink because of the proximity. A new school will be rebuilt within a year,” said RP Gupta, the director of education at the NDMC.

The principal of the school also claimed that this was true and had caused problems in the past.

“Whenever a drain got blocked, the sewage would flow into the classrooms,” said Poonam Kumari, the principal.

Gupta said that the NDMC was planning to rebuild the school where the current toilet complex exists, and would build the toilets at the site of the school.

“How is this a solution? Wouldn’t the school and the toilets still be right next to each other? Now, if the toilets overflow, our houses will be flooded with sewage,” said Sanjay Kumar Singh, the area’s representative and a resident.

Chanda Devi, the mother of a third grader at the school, this seems to be a larger ploy in the works. “They will shut down the school first. They will run us out next. We are an eyesore for them,” she claimed.