PANJIM: The Education Department’s circular on the ‘cleanliness drive campaign,’ starting from Monday, has not been accepted well by various schools that are opposed to cleaning toilets.
The department chalked out a detailed plan for the week-long exercise at all government, aided, unaided primary, secondary and higher secondary schools where students, assisted by staff will clean classrooms, libraries, laboratories, toilets, washrooms, playgrounds, pathways, staircase, surroundings and installations among other school properties.
As per the plan, school surroundings, toilets and staircases will have to cleaned on Tuesday, for which assistant district education inspectors (ADEIs) have been deputed to inspect two schools at random and submit a report.
“Now students have to clean toilets? Cleanliness drive does not mean this and that too during the monsoon,” the headmaster of an aided city school said, seeking anonymity.
A higher secondary school that recently received grants from the government, also objected to the campaign arguing it wasn’t correct to make students and staff clean toilets. “As a part of NSS camp, students clean the surroundings and as such we do not mind sanitizing the premises besides classrooms and other school properties. But not toilets please! The students cannot carry on with classes after that as they will need to clean themselves. The government should have thought of the hygiene too,” the headmistress told Herald.
What has also upset the institutions is the delay in issuing the circular as a majority of them received it only after school hours on Saturday. “We could not inform the students to prepare for the campaign on Monday,” a teacher of the Curtorim primary school stated.
During the last two days of the cleanliness drive, the educational institutions have been asked to hold campaign-related competitions, talks by eminent personalities and also to select the cleanest classrooms and best practices. “There is need to inculcate the spirit of hygiene, cleanliness and aversion to unhygienic conditions in all the children from the initial days of schooling,” the circular reads.
Several schools have also not geared up to commence the exercise as they will have to shift the class hours.
