Kendrapada: Unclean and inadequate number of toilets and bathrooms in a govt-run residential school in Jajpur district has forced over 250 tribal children to trek a kilometre through the Tamaku forest to the Ganda river for their morning ablutions and bath.
Of the 357 students of Sebasharm residential school, Upper Tamaka village in Jajpur district’s Danagadi block, 252 are boarders.Most of the toilets in the 30-year-old school have been in a dilapidated condition for 10 years now, said a teacher on condition of anonymity. “We find it easier to take a bath in the river and defecate in the open as the dirty toilets are very unhygienic to use. School authorities are not repairing the toilets,” said a Class VI student.
The school with classes I to VI has only five toilets and six common bathrooms and these do not have 24X7 water supply. “Students even carry their clothes to the river to wash those,” said a teacher, who did not want to be named.
The forest area is inhabited by elephants and other wild animals making it dangerous for the children to walk through it. “The ‘insensitive’ govt agencies are yet to build more proper toilets and bathrooms in this school to ensure safety of schoolchildren,” said Mantu Das, a social worker of Tamaka. Children often use the roadside to defecate.
“Children are forced to relieve themselves in the open at the time when the govt is trumpeting about its achievements of making many villages open defecation free,” said Anadi Mallick, a retired school teacher of Tamaka.

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