Numerous playschools have mushroomed in the city to cater for the needs of the pre-school-goers and prepare them for admissions in the schools of the city but they lack safety and are risking te lives of the children.
lack of safety measures in the school premises poses danger to the lives of the children, but neither the school authorities not the administration are serious towards the safety of students.
The students with these playschools are more prone as compared with the students of primary and secondary classes who could escape at the time of emergencies but students of playschools are not grown up to tackle the situation.
Sajid Ali Fire Officer said that there is no penalty for not maintaining emergency exits and fire safety systems by these playschools which very risky and could lead to huge loss to damage of property and lives of little kids.
The schools and playschools situated in narrow lanes are more vulnerable to dangers during emergencies. No safety measures to tackle emergency situations are taken by the school management and whenever audits are done they resort to excuses and provide fire extinguishers which could never help at the time of fire, he added.
Most of the play schools could be found without fire extinguishers and emergency exits and interestingly they do not need to maintain the safety measures.
One such example among several play schools could be witnessed at little learners playschool having a single narrow passage for entry and exit and no fire extinguishers could be found in the school to contain fire at emergency.
Others were in the bee-line and are not concerned for emergencies. Seema Khare of Bachpan playschool said that these safety audits are never conducted as these are done for schools not playschools.
Ayush of Wonder Kidz said that these kinds of audits are not required with the play schools.
Nitin Khare of one of the franchises of Kidzee said that the inspections are done by ‘Zee learn’ which also provide info on emergency but he failed to provide the last date of the safety inspection by any agency and other fire audit by concerned agency in the past.
According to the rule the State Governments and affiliating boards for schools have the responsibility to ensure that schools provide a safe and child friendly environment.
This Ministry had written on 27th July, 2004 to all States and Union Territories (UTs) directing that school buildings should be free from inflammable and toxic materials and there should be provision for adequate emergency exits.
They also need adequate supply of water and sand for fire fighting purposes.
Further, this Ministry’s guidelines issued on 9th October, 2014 state that school buildings should be resistant to earthquakes, fire, safe from floods and other calamities.