The Hindu 04.08.2012
Corporation asked to open closed primary school
It has remained under lock and key for six years
Needs attention:In the absence of students, playing cards have come to
replace Sarva Siksha Abiyan learning cards at the Corporation Primary
School in Ward 25.- Photo: M. Periasamy
‘Prevent discontinuance of education,’ ‘Admit all
eligible students,’ and other such messages on the wall of the
Corporation Primary School in Chinna Ellai Sandhu in Ward 25 mean very
little. For, there is no student to read the messages and spread across
the information.
It has been nearly six years since
the students read the messages. The last they could have read the
message would be on June 5, 2006, the date written on the black board of
Class IV. The board also has one of the longest English words written
on it.
The board opposite is that of Class V. Both
the boards have the number of students on roll and number of students
present. On June 5, 2006, Class IV had 13 students on roll. Of those 12
were present. Class V had 13 students on roll and 12 were present.
The
poor student strength was what led the Coimbatore Corporation to
shutdown the school sometime in 2006. “The strength used to be so poor,
that the neighbours complemented the students during Independence Day
and Republic Day functions,” recalls B. Amsaveni, a resident.
After
being under lock and key for the last six years, things have turned for
the worse in the school: the gates have fallen in love with the hinges
that they do not want to move an inch, roots have spread through cracks
on the wall to embrace the black board in a classroom, tipplers have a
whale of time to drink in peace and gamblers have a good place to polish
their card playing skills. Right behind the school is a vacant plot,
measuring about 15 cents. Sandwiched between two houses, the land has
also been disuse for long, as the humus suggests. The residents say they
want the Corporation to reopen the school and develop the vacant plot
into a park. Their demand echoed at the Coimbatore Corporation on Monday
where Ward 25 Councillor K. Jeyabal asked the officials to convert the
school in to a library and the vacant plot a park.
It
will benefit the residents of the area as they have neither a park nor a
library. Not just that, a Corporation asset in the form of school could
be put to the best possible use, he reasons. He says he has represented
the issue to the Mayor and Commissioner, who have promised to do the
needful.Corporation sources say they are seized of the issue and the school campus will spring back to life.