As many as 6,275 Government Primary schools in Jharkhand do not have girls’ toilets, while 3,772 schools in the State lack toilets for boys. Similarly, 3,458 schools do not have drinking water facilities for the students and 28,864 schools are without playground in the State of Jharkhand. There are total 73,793 posts of teachers are vacant in Jharkhand.
Prakash Javadekar, Minister for Human Resource Development gave the above information in Rajya Sabha on Thursday in reply to a question raised by member of Rajya Sabha Parimal Nathwani.
At the national level, total 1,62,355 schools do not have girls’ toilet and 54,800 schools lack boys’ toilet, while 5,4326 schools do not have drinking facilities. Total 4,99,595 schools in the country are running without playground for students, while 9,07,585 posts of teachers are vacant in different States of the country.
The Minister informed that under the Swachch Vidyalaya initiative 4,17,796 toilets were built in 2,61,400 elementary and secondary Government schools thus ensuring that every Government school has functional separate toilets for girls and boys as on 15th August 2015.
Nathwani wanted to know about number of government schools lacking basic infrastructure facilities and amenities along with shortage of teachers and corrective steps taken by the Government to provide amenities/facilities in the Government schools at par with the public and private schools.
The Minister stated that the Central Government supports State Governments and Union Territory administrations for creation and augmentation of infrastructural facilities in government elementary schools under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA). Under SSA, posts of additional teachers have been sanctioned to States and UTs to maintain the Pupil Teacher Ratio in the Government schools as per the RTE norms, he said.
He added that since the inception of SSA in 2001 till March 31, 2016, 3.64 lakh new elementary schools, construction of 3.11 lakh school buildings, and 18.61 lakh additional classrooms, 2.38 lakh drinking water facilities, 10.14 lakh school toilets and 19.48 lakh teachers posts have been sanctioned to States and UTs.