Derailing standards: Education in Leemo Goth going down the drain, literally

Garbage dump beside the schools clogs student attendance.

KARACHI: For the children of Leemo Gabol Goth, the struggle to acquire education does not end at making it to the classrooms and finding teachers who want to teach but, crossing the main gate without soiling their clothes and fighting infectious diseases is also a part of the effort.  

Four schools - Leemo Gabol Goth Government Girls Primary School, Leemo Gabol Goth Government Boys Secondary School, Leemo Gabol Government Girls Lower Secondary School and Leemo Gabol Government Girls Secondary School - located in Gulshan-e-Iqbal have a very short address - kachray wali gali.



Student absenteeism is a norm as many children fall sick due to a huge garbage dump beside the schools and an occasional overflowing gutter in front of the main gate. The boundary wall of the four schools - which have approximately 900 students and 45 faculty members - stretches along the entire block and the schools.

"My shoes get dirty if I accidentally step on the garbage on the street," said a class-three student, Shanza. Another student of the same class, Savaira Nazook, said, "Sometimes, when there is sewage water on the street, I have to hop over puddles." The danger of students falling into the gutter also looms large as a few months ago, a student narrowly escaped one such incident.

With foul smell coming inside the schools, it becomes difficult for teachers and students to focus on studies.

Recently, the sewage water seeped into nearby homes due to an overflowing gutter. Earlier, the management of one school had paid to build a gutter. It was cleaned and covered with a lid. But, according to the information provided by the schools, Karachi Metropolitan Corporation workers broke the lid to clean the line despite being told that the sewerage line is clear. Now, the gutter is open again and trash is being dumped into it.

"We have written to the Karachi Water and Sewerage Board (KWSB) but received no response," said Girls Primary School principal Tehmina Sabeen Qureshi.

On the other hand, KWSB superintendent-engineer Riaz A Gori denied receiving any complaints.

Due to the effluent, children catch many diseases, especially during lunch breaks, when students from all four schools buy lunch from the food stalls on the street. "They [children] live in an area where garbage and open main holes are everywhere. In such an environment, they are bound to catch diseases," said Dr Khalid, who has been running a clinic in the same neighbourhood for 14 years. The children he treats mostly suffer from flu, cough, diarrhoea, fever, typhoid, jaundice and skin diseases.

To resolve the problems, all schools have run community campaigns, pooled in money and approached political workers. "Once all four schools pooled in money to clean the street," said a Government Boys Secondary School teacher, Nuzhat Naheed Naqvi. This money was paid to waste collectors to clean the street, she added.

"We went door-to-door to request people not to throw garbage but nobody listened," complained Ruqiya Abbas, a teacher at the Girls Primary School. Although trash has always been there, the situation became worse with the recent construction on the nearby plots. Now, the school street is the only place where residents dispose of trash. "The garbage was always there but it was away from the schools because there were empty plots in the area but, a few years back, when the plots were allotted for construction, trash started accumulating near the main gate," recalled Abbas, who has been teaching for 22 years.

District Metropolitan Corporation East vehicles pick up the garbage but not regularly. DMC East administrator Nadir Ali Wasan said, "The issue has not come to my knowledge. I will send my team to assess the situation."

Published in The Express Tribune, April 15^th, 2014.