Madurai Bench of Madras HC slams government for poor school sanitation facilities
Madurai: Even after the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa had launched a novel free sanitary napkin scheme for adolescent girls in government schools for the first time in the country, it was not implemented properly in the schools, the court observed.
This was brought to the light by the advocate commission appointed by the Madurai Bench of Madras High Court to assess the availability of toilet and sanitation facilities in the government schools in Madurai, Dindigul and Thanjavur recently following a PIL filed by social activist C.Anantha Raj highlighting the lack of toilets in government schools.
The division bench comprising Justices Nagamuthu and K.Krishnakumar, the court observed that many schools don’t have napkin vending machines and the existing one were not functioning, said the court.
When the government advocate general R Muthukumarswamy told the court that the vending machines might be defunct in some schools due to technical snags, Justice Nagamuthu countered him saying they were not functioning properly in all the schools inspected by the commission and the schools also don’t have masonry choolas or incinerators for disposing of the napkins, the Judge said.
The GAG assured the court that they would make arrangement to distribute quality napkins by school teachers to the students soon and also construct choolas in the schools within a year.
The judges directed the government to first take up the construction of urinals in the girls and co-education schools in the next academic year; and to complete it in the boys in the subsequent year.
When the court questioned the lack of toilet facilities in government schools, Muthukumarswamy said that they needed to construct only 74,678 urinals and 17,960 water closets in schools. The government would complete the construction of nearly 20,000 urinals within this academic year. And the remaining toilets would be constructed in a phased manner in the following years.
