This year’s monsoon arrived in Hazaribagh district alongwith deadly lightning, which took seven lives in two days. The district is known to be lightening prone and in every monsoon several deaths are caused by this natural phenomenon. To save the students of Government schools from this threat in 2007 and 2008 State Government had spent more than Rs2.5 crore in installing lightening conductors in the schools.
According to the engineer of Jharkhand Education Project Council, Narendra Kumar, at that time lightening conductors were installed in more than 800 primary and middle schools of the district. More than 80 per cent conductors have been stolen so far as per the reports of headmasters of those schools.
There are 1,608 primary and middle schools in Hazaribagh district and most of them are in rural areas. In villages where there are only mud houses, school buildings constructed under the schemes of Jharkhand Education Project are the only cemented buildings so the threat of lightening is more on these buildings compared to other ones situated nearby.
As per the information collected from the Education Project Office in the year 2007-08 and 2008-09 funds were sanctioned for installation of lightning conductors.
Proper crosschecking was not done whether the conductors were installed or not. After one or two years the headmasters started informing that conductor has been stolen but no one directed them to submit copy of FIR with this report.