Alappuzha: Weeks after rain, this school is still flooded
Last year also, the school had to be shut for three months due to the floods.
ALAPPUZHA: The students of Kuppapuram High School, the only government school in Kainakary panchayat, are on slippery ground. Though the rain has subsided, the school remains water-logged after the Kanakassery bund breached on August 16.
As many as 174 students, including 14 of class X, most of them from poor families in the panchayat, have to wade through water in the class rooms as the bund, which was half finished, breached for a second time on September 9.
Last year also, the school had to be shut for three months due to the floods.
P. Sarngan, headmaster, said normalcy would be restored only when pumping starts after the bund work is completed.
The kindergarten section of the school remains shut. Students are allowed to go outside the classroom only for using toilets, most of which are unusable. A temporary passage has been set up with benches to go to the toilets. Classes are being conducted to complete 200 academic days this year, he said.
He feared that the frequent bund breaches will hit the future pros-pects of the school. The parents may shift their children to the schools in Alappuzha town whe-re they can reach by fe-rry boats.
According to the Kana-kassery Padasekhara Samithy, it will take a week more to finish the bund work. Sandbags were being laid in the broken portion. Coconut tree trunks will be piled and bamboo fence erected on either side of the mud wall to make it withstand the pressure of river water. The work was delayed due to the unavailability of mac-hines to lay sandbags, the samithy said.