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Education takes a stand still as government school turns into temporary shelter for Pune slum fire victims
Thursday, Friday and Saturday (half day) of the school work was lost for the 650-700 students of the school
The education of nearly 650 to 700 children has been hit adversely ever since the PMC Colony government school in which they were studying was transformed into a temporary shelter for the victims of the Patil Estate slum fire. Over 1,200 families were rendered homeless after a devastating fire broke out in the slum on Wednesday.
The school is located in PMC Colony area near the Patil Estate slum which suffered a fire incident three days ago. The children running in the corridors are not on campus for education but for mere survival after losing their entire households in the fire.
“Most of the children in the school are from Patil Estate. The school was informed about the incident and the required arrangement was made a little after 2pm (The fire brigade received a call at 1.10pm). The teachers were in the school till around 6:15pm when the last child was handed over to his parents,” said Shilpa Gholap who works closely with the principal of the school. “In fact, the number goes up in the evenings as everyone is looking for space to sleep,” she added on Friday.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday (half day) of the school work was lost for the 650-700 students of the school. The pupils missing academic work include ones studying in English, Marathi and Urdu medium.
The principal of the school, Anjali Mandhale, was on leave when the incident happened and the school was headed by Ujwala Nangre, vice principal, in her absence.
Ganesh Sonune, disaster management department officer at Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) said government structures for such situations are pre-identified and people are shifted there and provided with water, sanitation and food.
“That is the protocol. For example, people were provided with blankets and donations from us as well as private organisations. If needed, private halls and open private spaces are taken into consideration as well. For the (school) days which are lost, we have to make sure that the timings are adjusted later on - in 3-7 days - when everyone has found a replacement shelter,” he said.
When asked for how long the school will suffer loss of academic days, Nangre said that cannot be specified.
While the teachers were gathered in one room, 13 classrooms were allotted for shelter and one for medical help. Dr Geetanjali Joshi sat with one nurse in the day shift and while they did not get any fire-related cases, the doctors had attended to 108 patients for common conditions like cold, fever, sore throat, among others, within 20 hours of the tragedy.
