SRINAGAR– At least 2639 schools were damaged in devastating floods that hit Kashmir valley last month, officials said Thursday.
“In the entire region we have 532 fully damaged schools and 2107 partially damaged,” Nirmal Sharma, secretary school education said.
Almost all the affected schools have lost their vital infrastructure including office record, furnishing and food grains meant for running mid-day meal scheme. Indian’s federal government has been providing mid-day meals across all the schools in the country to bring down drop-out rate in schools.
The authorities have directed Public Works Department (PWD) to prepare a report about the safety of these buildings.
“We have formed a joint team with PWD who will assess every school building affected by the floods and determine whether the structure is safe for students or not,” region’s Education Minister Tara Chand said.
“Some schools where water has drained out and were deemed safe have started class work whereas other schools which are still submerged or have suffered extensive damage are yet to be opened.”
According to Sharma, food grains worth 31,198 U.S. dollars and kitchen ware worth 216,033 U.S. dollars were destroyed in these schools.
The officials said the region board of school education has also reported the loss of 227,570 U.S. dollars to text books.
As the waters are receding, a threat of diseases spreading is looming large in the flood hit areas especially the affected schools.
There are calls that government should prefer survival to schooling and shutdown schools for the safety of school children.
“It is no exaggeration that things are not normal in Kashmir post-floods. And if the functionality of schools is fixed as a ‘ yardstick’ to this normalization, it’s grotesque,” reads a front page editorial in the a leading newspaper Greater Kashmir.
The newspaper goes on to suggest that government should immediately close down all schools until March next year in the interest of children’s safety.
The local government has admitted the region suffered an estimated loss of over 16 billion U.S. dollars to infrastructure and business in the devastating floods.
The figure was initially given by a Srinagar based civil society group — Kashmir Center for Social and Development Studies (KCSDS).
Reports said about 2,600 villages and several towns including Srinagar — the summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir were affected by the flooding and remained submerged in water, resulting in colossal damage to housing, agriculture, transport and business sectors.
The floods first hit districts in southern Srinagar and later water breached banks of the river Jehlum, which was flowing above the danger mark and inundated Srinagar city and outskirts wreaking havoc. -Xinhua
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