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Children play in crematorium as school ground waterlogged in Haryana village
“Where else do we go? Our schoolteachers have been encouraging us to play indoor games because of the waterlogging. But we play here in the crematorium. It is closer to our school premises,” said Rahul Kumar, a Class-8 student.
Children at Kherari village in the district are forced to play in the village crematorium as their school playground has been waterlogged for the past two months.
The primary and senior secondary schools in the village have a common playground in between their buildings, which remains flooded due to rainwater and lack of any drainage facility.
“Where else do we go? Our schoolteachers have been encouraging us to play indoor games because of the waterlogging. But we play here in the crematorium. It is closer to our school premises,” said Rahul Kumar, a Class-8 student.
The situation has shocked parents of the students in the village, who are now worried about their little children being exposed to cremations on a regular basis. “The first time I heard my son is playing in the crematorium, I dragged him by his ears and brought him back home. But, he does not seem to listen and follows his friends,” said Ratia Devi, mother of a Class-5 boy.
To make the matters worse, the water collected at the school playground has become a breeding ground for mosquitoes, leading to spread of diseases like malaria and chikungunya in the village.
Sarpanch Bhupender said around 15 cases of malaria and chikungunya each have been reported in the village in the past two weeks. “The victims are mostly children and women,” said the sarpanch.
On being asked why there had been no attempts to drain the rainwater from the ground, Bhupender said, “There’s no drainage system. We can’t do it on our own because the fields next to school are flooded as well. We have met the administration authorities but they have extended no help.”
He said, “The panchayat has no money. But still we are trying to set up a ground on the panchayat land here by collecting funds from the residents. It will take another month before it gets ready.”
While the children play at the crematorium, village’s cricket team that has won university-level games cannot have its practice because there’s no sufficient place.
When asked about steps to clean school playground of water, the school administration said they had no mechanism to drain out the water. However, they said, they had arranged for fogging to check the vector-borne diseases.
