Sewerage water floods blind school, keeps students away from classes

Sewerage water flooding the classrooms of Bibi Bhani Istri Netarheen Kirat Ate Sikhlai Kendra — a school for visually impaired girls in Chheharta area here — has kept 16 students and four teachers, all visually impaired, away from the classes for almost past six days.

The school authorities, who have made numerous effort to contact the Amritsar municipal authorities for help, accused the civic authorities of indifference.

Dharam Pal (also visually impaired), general secretary of the kendra, said the sewerage had flooded the classrooms, making it difficult for the school management to hold classes.

The Kendra, which is being run by Bharat Netarheen Sewak Samaj, is a residential school, where visually impaired girls are provided education in Braille and vocational training.

“The classes are on the ground floor, while the hostel is on the first floor of the school building. The students and faculty are cooped up indoors the hostel for the past six days as the classrooms are flooded by sewerage water,” he said.

In addition, the flooding has also unleashed the threat of outbreak of deadly diseases. “Repeated efforts were made to contact the MC authorities, but nobody turned up to bail us out of this precarious situation,” he said.

Resident facing similar situation

At a stone’s throwaway distance from the Kendra, residents of Kabir Park area are battling with a similar problem — dirty water from an a sewerage system entering more than 300 houses and commercial establishments, while converting the access road to the locality into a big puddle.

Hazara Singh Cheema, a resident of the area and general secretary, Residents Welfare Association, Kabir Park, said even as sewerage pipelines had been laid in the area under the JICA project, another project undertaken by the civic body were yet to be connected with the sewerage system in the area.

“Above all, cesspits in the area have been broken by the BRTS project construction work, hence aggravating the problem even further,” he added.

He maintained that the matter had been brought to the notice of Amritsar deputy commissioner, but no action was initiated. Municipal commissioner Pradeep Sabharwal was not available for comments despite repeated attempts to contact him.