No students? No toilets in schools in Andhra Pradesh, Telangana

Hyderabad: After corporates pledged to build toilets in government schools, the Union HRD ministry has been forced to remove several hundreds of schools in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana state from the list due to lack of student enrollment.

No one seems to know the number of toilets actually required in schools in the two states and the HRD ministry sources blame the two state governments for the confusion.

Sources in the HRD ministry say that the states have to requisition the government for building toilets under the scheme, while the state governments say that all schools will automatically be covered under the scheme.

Last year, public sector undertakings like Power Finance Corporation and National Thermal Power Corporation had pledged to build toilets in the schools listed by the two state governments and other states in the country.

However, the HRD ministry has now deleted more than 1,400 government schools in Andhra Pradesh and more than 1,000 government schools in Telangana for lack of student enrollment there. The ministry wants to build toilets first in those schools that have adequate number of students. The rest will follow later.

Central government officials also blame the lack of clarity in AP and TS governments about the actual number of toilets they require.

“It has been a problem in only these two states. Nowhere in the country are we facing such a problem. The planning officials don’t even know what a toilet block is. They actually listed one toilet block as two toilets, which led to a lot of confusion,” a senior HRD ministry official said, asking not to be named.

Officials say that toilets under the Swachh Vidyalaya scheme will be built in schools that have enrollment in Classes IX and 1. “For others, the state governments will have to get funds under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan,” officials said.

State government officials, however, said that toilets would be built in all schools. Telangana education minister, Kadiam Srihari, had recently said that the Centre was providing for about 1.5 lakh toilets while the state had estimated 2.5 lakh toilets.

AP School Education department officials had also said that all schools would be covered under the scheme.

While this is the case in government schools, private schools are also languishing. A recent TS government survey of 442 private schools had found that several schools had only one toilet for many classes. The survey had also found that many girl students in private schools refrained from using toilets for fear of infections.