30 civic schools wiped off edu slate in 5 years

Anahita Mukherji I TNN

Mumbai: In five years between 2002 and 2007, 30 BMC schools vanished from the city, stated a recently released United Nations Development Programme report on Mumbai.

With the closing down of the schools, nearly 2 lakh children were also thrown out of the public education system in those five years. TOI traced one such school to Chembur’s Subhash Nagar area, which was pulled down by a developer in 2007. Since then, two years have passed but there are no signs of an alternative accommodation. Students and teachers at the school have found themselves at the receiving end of the blame-game between the BMC and the builders. The children have now been squeezed into a neighbouring school.

The Subhash Nagar Kannada-medium BMC school has been running for over half a century out of 12 rented rooms on the ground floor of a Mhada building. In 2007, when the residents went in for redevelopment, the building was broken down and the schoolkids dumped in a nearby BMC school at Subhash Nagar, which has Kannada, Gujarati, Marathi and Hindi sections. School officials complained that there was not enough space in this building to accommodate the 200-odd children who have been shifted out of the Kannada-medium institute. “Though the headmaster has retired, no one has been appointed in his place,’’ say officials from a BMC teachers’ union. “The children have been accommodated in laboratories and verandahs,’’ states a report by the BMC’s own audit department, slamming the civic body’s education department.

“The developer dumped school furniture and other stuff outside the premises while breaking it down,’’ says the audit report. “The former headmaster had to pay from his pocket for things that were lost when the building was pulled down,’’ a teachers’ union official said.

As a compensation for the 12 rooms of the Kannada school, the builder has given the BMC six flats on the fifth floor of a residential building, from where it is impossible to run classes. The audit report says the BMC should have acquired an alternative premises suitable for a school, instead of shifting the children to another institute.

The report says the BMC has not got its dues from the builder and the education department’s negligence has resulted in revenue loss. “Mhada had asked the BMC for the custody of the 12 rooms, but the BMC education officer handed them over to the builder directly,’’ states the report.

A spokesperson for the RNA group, whose sister concern, GA builders, is redeveloping the plot, says they had offered to construct a brand new building for the BMC school on an area that was one-and-a-half times bigger than the older one. “The BMC is still looking into the offer,’’ said the spokesperson. “We have already compensated the BMC for the area occupied by the school with six flats that are worth more than the original.’’ When TOI pointed out that these flats were unsuitable for running a school, he said there were hardly any children going to the school in the first place and the building that was demolished was in a dilapidated condition.

However, according to BMC education officer Abahaseb Jadhav, while the construction company had promised to redevelop the school, they had not yet done so. “We have made temporary arrangements until the new school is ready. The neighbouring school building, where we have shifted our students, has enough rooms for them. We are holding on to the six flats that the builder has given us, until we get the new premises,’’ said Jadhav.

UPROOTED: The plot on which the Subhash Nagar Kannada-medium school once stood