Sopore, Oct 29: Fed up of the false promises by Education Department for the last four years over a new building for Saidpora High School in north Kashmir’s Sopore, the students, staff members at the school along with the locals have pooled funds to build a three room building for the students.
Around Rs 2.5 lakh is supposed to be spent on the construction of the said building which is near completion and by the 15th of November, students would be taking classes here.
Sarpanch of the village Zaffar Ahmad told Greater Kashmir that after the school was upgraded four years back, the whole village was happy. “We were told that the infrastructure for this school would be upgraded to the next level but nothing like that happened,” he said.
“After witnessing the hardships with regard to lack of accommodation of over 125 students studying here, I along with other PRI’s brought this issue into the notice of Zonal Education Officer Dangerpora numerous times but after realizing the ZEO is doing nothing, we went to Chief Education Officer Baramulla to seek his intervention. He sought a report from ZEO Dangarpora for the construction of a new building but that report never reached the CEO office till date,” Zaffar added.
A teacher on the condition of anonymity said that the school has only three rooms for 11 classes, with no laboratory and library facilities available for the students. “We are forced to take classes in the open sky and during inclement weather, students are adjusted in the available three rooms and veranda,” he said.
“On a rainy day, while teaching students on the veranda of our school, the words of a student shattered me and I instantly stopped teaching”. “Do we deserve this treatment, doesn’t the government have money to provide us accommodation? I went to the staff room and started collecting money from other staff members for construction of a new building, ” he added.
He said the students and locals also contributed for the construction of the three room building. “With strong will power we can change things on our own without waiting for the government’s help, ” said the teacher.
According to locals, they have donated twenty kanal land for this school but development of infrastructure is still a mystery for them due to reasons best known to concerned authorities.
They said that every year the school produces a hundred percent result in 10th class but still it faces official neglect.