Frequent thefts of lightning conductors installed in school buildings have put the safety of over 50 lakh students at risk in Jharkhand. Fed up of the situation, the State Disaster Management Authority (SDMA) has stopped pressing the School Education and Literacy Department for reinstallation of the life saving metal rods, which are a must to prevent casualties caused by lightning, officials said on Wednesday.
“Lightning conductors were installed in almost all the schools, but they were stolen. We have stopped pressing the concerned department to reinstall lightning conductors as they would again get stolen in absence of proper security at schools,” said Manish Tiwary, Joint Secretary, SDMA.
A majority of Government schools in Jharkhand are located in semi urban and rural areas. Some of the schools don’t even have a proper boundary wall to demarcate its campus. Sources from the School Education and Literacy Department said that local villagers and slum dwellers stole some of the lightning conductors within weeks since they were installed. Some locals stole the lightning conductors to sell its metal in the market and make money, sources said.
According to SDMA, around 1,800 people have been killed by lightning in the last 12 years in Jharkhand. The SDMA data says that lightning kills a person every other day on an average in a year. Experts, however, say the numbers are much higher as several deaths in State’s remote areas go unreported.
“Lightning claimed around 228 lives in Jharkhand in 2016 and 240 in 2017. We can say that lightning kills around 250-300 people in Jharkhand every year,” said Colonel Sanjay Srivastava, former project officer of SDMA.
The SDMA had, in 2016, directed that all government schools in Jharkhand should have lightning conductors. And the school education department had complied with the direction. However, students and teachers at schools still remain susceptible to lightning strikes. None of the departments here have the exact figure of schools that do not have a lightning conductor, neither have any surveys been conducted in the recent past to get a clearer picture.
“Right now, there is no direction from the department to install lightning conductors in school buildings,” said School Education and Literacy secretary Amrendra Pratap Singh. A majority of school buildings in Jharkhand are single or double storied, he said, adding that the taller buildings were more likely to fall prey to lightning.
Taking suo moto cognizance of deaths caused by lightning, the Jharkhand High Court in 2007 had directed the government to install lightning conductors in every school and important government buildings.
Lightning conductors are rods made of 90 per cent copper and some amount of aluminum. These rods act as insulators and prevent the flow of current into the building in case lightning strikes. Sources from School Management Committees (SMC) say that the copper in lightning conductor fetches decent money to the thieves.